The Panhard 24 is a compact two-door coupé automobile produced between 1964 and 1967 by French manufacturer Panhard. It was powered by a front-mounted air-cooled two-cylinder boxer motor: the basic design of this unconventional engine dated back to the 1940s. In 1965, a lengthened Panhard 24 was launched and promoted as a two-door four- or five-seat saloon. Plans for a four-door version which might have enabled the car more effectively to replace the commercially successful Panhard PL 17 saloon were never implemented, however.
Although the 24 had no Panhard badged successor, a number of the features of the Citroën GS which appeared (after an unusually long gestation period) in 1970 respected Panhard traditions. The Panhard 24 may be thought of as the swan song of Panhard automobile production (since 1967 the Panhard business has concentrated on manufacturing light military vehicles).
Background
Panhard was among the earliest automobile producers and, by some criteria, the first volume auto producer in the world, in 1890.
In 1955, Citroën had taken a 25 percent holding in Panhard's automobile business and from this time onwards the two brands were increasingly managed as a single range. During the next two years, the national dealership networks of the two businesses were integrated. This gave Citroën and Panhard dealers an expanded market coverage, incorporating now a small car (Citroën 2CV), a medium-sized saloon (Panhard Dyna Z) and a large car range (Citroën DS). It gave Citroën desperately needed production capacity at Panhard's plant in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, which from now on produced Citroën 2CV Fourgonettes (light vans) alongside Panhard sedans.
In the second half of the 1950s, the integration of the sales and service networks energised sales of the Panhard Dyna Z and of its successor, the Panhard PL 17. Nevertheless, product development decisions tended to favour the Citroën brand ahead of Panhards, which also seem to have lost out to the Citroën Fourgonette in respect of production capacity allocation.
During the later 1950s, the Citroën DS range extended its appeal downmarket with the more aggressively priced Citroën ID. 1961 saw the launch of the Citroën Ami, effectively representing an upmarket and modernised version of the Citroën 2CV. It is also clear that plugging the gap in Citroën's range with a Citroën-branded model was being mooted many years before the 1970 arrival of the Citroën GS.
In looking to upgrade their popular PL 17, Panhard faced strong opposition from Citroën president Pierre Bercot to any new model that could trespass significantly on market segments where Citroën had an existing or planned presence of their own. This appears to be the reason why the firm's roomy four-door sedan found itself replaced by a coupé design, in the form of the Panhard 24. The proposal by the Panhard design team to fit the 24 with a four-cylinder engine was also blocked, on cost grounds, in favour of the existing Panhard two-cylinder unit.
The body
The car featured a low modern body line with a prominent waist level groove reminiscent of the then fashionable Chevrolet Corvair. At a time when monocoque construction was becoming mainstream, the 24 sat on a separate and very strong tubular steel chassis: it was therefore possible, even using the economically available materials of the time, to keep the window pillars relatively thin which gave the car an airy cabin and outstanding all-round visibility, while class leading structural rigidity for the body could nonetheless be claimed, thanks to the pleating and reinforcement of the roof panel. The tubular steel front and rear subchassis were bolted to a platform frame that comprised the floor and the flat steel sidemembers. Under the skin, the structural architecture was little changed from that of the Dyna 54.
Although the basic engine format had changed little since 1948, the lack of a radiator and the low profile of the boxer-motor configuration made it possible for the Panhard to achieve an exceptionally low and streamlined front end that sat well with more recent styling trends. Citroën's own DS design, constrained by the taller profile of its more conventional water-cooled unit, achieved a similarly wind cheating front profile only by setting the engine some forty centimetres back from the front of the car.