Borg Warner Citroën DS in Australia, by Greg

The DS BW was meant for the US Market, as Americans didn’t like the BVH too well. The box was based on the Borg Warner 35, but with a lot of re-engineering.

The same goes for the DS integrated Air Conditioner. It was meant for the American Market, but unfortunately, due to Bumper and other regulation, Citroen withdrew from the US market without any deliveries having taken place of either the BW or factory AC.

Only continuing shipments of SMs were delivered with the BW gearbox.

Obviously when Citroen commissioned the box from BW, the contract would have been for a certain number of units, which of course with the withdrawal from the US, it was no longer able to meet.

Citroen also knew that the box was not without many problems, and was at best very unreliable right from the delivery day.

With France particularly, and Europe in general, not a big market in Automatic Transmissions, and also not wishing to have the embarrassment of the boxes unreliability on its home shores, most automatic DSs were sent to Australia. They were sold at a price that the then concessioner couldn’t ignore, and consequently very few DS23 BVH were delivered in Australia, Citroen & the importer preferring to take the much cheaper BW transmission cars.

The car was a problem right from the arrival in Australia, with the then Citroen workshop manager telling me they would send car carriers to pick up the manual transmission DSs, and tow trucks for the Automatics

There were a multitude of problems with the transmissions both early on and later in life if the car lasted that long. Some were rectified by Citroen / BW but most were just left for the Australian importer to solve. Some car would have the transmission removed 3 or 4 times before the car finished its 12 month warranty period.

So bad were the problems that Citroen compensated the importer financially for having taken the automatic DSs. The compensation programme was called the Citroen Borg Warner Compensation Programme, and I saw the last Cheque when it arrived at the  then Concessioner.

By The Way:

The reason the gearshift was black was because Australian Design rules said the no instruments etc in the line of sight of the driver could be reflective. Consequently, all Australian delivered DSs had black instrument stalks, black surrounds to the steering wheel top pad embellisher, and black gear change levers for both manual and automatic cars. For simplicity, Citroen obviously delivered Left Hand Drive cars with the same black lever. The lever its self was the same part in LH & RH drive

As most DS BW were fitted with an Autoclima AC unit because of our hot climate (the new factory integrated AC unit could not be fitted as it was designed for Left Hand Drive, and our suspension height crossover rod fouled the rear of the AC unit), our DSs were all  fitted with Fuel Injection with the BW transmission, and  were a horrendously hot car to drive, particularly in traffic. The importer removed both the engine gearbox assembly on some cars, and lined the firewall with Asbestos to pacify some customers.

Greg (Australia)