The 2CV is classic because it epitomizes ugliness.
No, the 2CV is a classic because it is simple, economical, well-engineered, rugged, and has a bullet-proof suspension that can drive over a plowed field as well as a road.
Oh, and it’s also The World’s Best Car.
The 2CV design goes back a lot more than 50 years (to 1948). It needs to be compared to the Beetle, Morris Minor, and old Fiat 500. None of them were at all beautiful. All were designed to be cheaply made and functional. I’ve always found the Deux Cheval ungainly, but it is roomier than most competitors and had some clever engineering to keep the price down. They were also surprisingly durable and simple to repair, with many puttering around the French countryside for decades. Most European nations have unpleasant memories of their postwar austerity cars. The Germans do not esteem the Beetle like foreigners do, old Fiat Cinquecentos make people smile, but no one has find memories of driving these tiny clown cars. The only Morris Minor that hung on into the last twenty years were grandma cars. Nothing stylish about them. The car of that ear I quite like is the Citroën Traction Avant, designed in 1934 and made for twenty years, it was one of the first popular fwd cars. The line were handsome and rakish and can be seen in many French crime thrillers of the ear. I was lucky enough to see a nice one at a gas station a couple of month ago.
The Tribeca nose was going to be the new Subaru standard nose, playing on their aircraft heritage. So it has a rounded box center section like the front of a fuselage, and extending out on either side tapered air intakes shaped like wings. Nope, didn’t work, and they redesigned it quickly, but by then it was too late. The interior was also a bit strange. I though some of the early compact SUV models looked quite strange, including the stubby 1st gen. RAV4. and various Isuzu, and Suzukis (X90, anyone?)
Speaking of the Traction Avant reminds me of this story about the 1935 Bugatti Aerolithe. The restorers mentioned in the article below built a new body out of magnesium. The build was shown in a couple of episodes of a car show on the Velocity Channel. Sometimes when welding, the magnesium caught fire and made quite a spectacle. But the metalworker apparently mastered the technique of forming and welding magnesium body panels. The car is a masterpiece:
the chevy citation could have been cited for public ugliness as well
I watched the youtube of the 2CV assembly plant last night and it was interesting. Pretty crude assembly methods though. Two guys flip the body over and drag it on the ground to the next work station. Might be kinda fun to have one.
I think the europeans don’t have fond memories of our small postwar cars . . . which were around for decades after the war . . . because we were almost forced into driving them
Only truly well off people could afford a “real” car with 4 doors, a real trunk lid, and rear wheel drive
Most of the rest were stuck with those other cars which were mentioned. If they could afford a car at all
And true full size cars, such as were common in the US, were exceedingly rare in europe, for a very long time
I dont see nothing wrong with a 2CV,the Tribeca remindedme of a fruit bat-Kevin
Yes, the Germans think we’re strange for remembering the Beetle so fondly. To them it was a crude, uncomfortable car that was all they could afford in a very unhappy era. The 2CV was a slightly different matter. It was made for decades because French farmers loved their simplicity and their ability to conquer even very rough roads without dislodging dental work. For driving a few miles into the village at low speed they were quite acceptable. A friend of mine here in San Francisco owned one of the van versions that appeared to have a quonset hut grafted onto the back. Pea green, but no one else for miles owned one like it. A bit of an eccentric, needless to say.
Mark, I think perhaps the Germans remember the Beetle differently than we do because the post WWII years for them were years of great pain, humiliation, exhaustion, and depression, all in the context of living in a country totally destroyed by one of history’s most terrible madmen. For us they were a time of celebration and prosperity.
When I think of the Beetle I think happy thoughts. I suspect that when a German thinks of the Beetle they think about Hitler, or at least about a totally destroyed homeland.
mountainbike
It wasn’t just Germany that had lean times after the war
Many of the european countries had lean economic times after the war.
If I recall correctly, the French and British were also forced to drive very small cars after the war, if they could afford a car at all, that is
Speaking of madmen, Joe Stalin was right up there . . . or right down there, if you will . . . with the worst of them. His “subjects” also didn’t enjoy a very prosperous lifestyle. Their cars were pure garbage, and many of them were blatant copies
Gotta agree with @db4690 If you have any doubts about the terror reigned by Stalin, read the documentary “Iron Curtain”. We have a sister city in Germany that was established by the local General after the war to provide clothing, food, and other supplies to this city. They say without that help they would have frozen or starved to death. Still have a regular exchange program and are viewed as heros. Personally, I had a love-hate relationship with my Beetle.
Speaking of the Eastern Bloc, let’s not forget the Trabant as one of the world’s worst cars.
I always liked the Trabbie: Non-rusting body panels, gravity feed, air-cooled. The minimum number of systems to potentially fail, and when something does, easily repaired by a farmer using the same tools he uses on his combine. (Remember that dealer service was a wishful thought behind the Curtain.)
Outside of the (admittedly horrid) emissions, what’s not to like? In a day of factory-only tools and diagnostic computers, there’s an appeal to a car fixable by anyone with the skills necessary to rebuild a lawnmower.
I guess it’s the cloud of blue smoke from the Trabant that blinds me to the rest of its virtues. 
Well then slap a cat on it! I just find it funny that we FREQUENTLY hear it on this site that "cars are to complicated. Give me something simple, where I can get to everything, that I don’t have to be an EE to work on."
And then something exists that epitomizes this philosophy…and everyone rags on it…
I think there’s some significant wiggle room between “rolling pile of crap” and “too complicated to work on.” 
Proof:
Hah. My first new car was a 1988 CRX Si. Loved that thing. Nowhere near as simple as a 2CV or Trabant to work on, and you had to have small hands to reach the oil filter and almost everything else crammed into the engine compartment. But it was a great car.
@meanjoe, I love the 2CV and didn’t rag on that wonderfully simple car. I’d love to have one. Would I love to have a Trabant? No. But if someone gives me one, I’ll send it over to you.
I still have my 91 DX with an Si swap. No rust, showroom condition paint. If my MR2 ever stops needing money thrown at it, I’ll refresh the CRX with a new interior and yet another engine swap.
No, it’s not as simple to work on as a Trabant, but then it has nice amenities like a fuel gauge, and a fuel tank that won’t turn you into a human torch in a front-end accident The fact that it’s not actually designed to burn a lot of oil is a plus too.
And compared to today’s cars, it’s a breeze to work on - very straightforward.
My standard of a car is NOT how easy it is to work on, it’s how often you had to work on it. Sure, you could remove the engine of a VW Beetle in 20 minutes, but how often are you supposed to have to remove the engine anyway? Swell, the Trabant was very simple. It was also an unreliable and flimsy piece of junk. That Honda Civic is the example of what a car has become and should be. We expect cars to run like refrigerators, for 200,000 or more miles and then we ditch them because they need a head gasket or a transmission rebuild.
And let’s not forget the filth and chemical stuff those old cars blew into the air everyday. I remember the air in Los Angeles in the late 60’s, and I am not interested in going back to that. Have you seen Beijing air pollution? That’s what you get with unregulated emissions. We get to live nearly 20 years longer than our grandparents, in part because we don’t have to breathe the air they had. Count yourself very lucky.