For Christmas i received a copy of a book i have wanted for years - 'The Assembly Line' by Robert Linhart.

this following segment is lifted from the cover of the book:





Although reading the above it may sound heavy, it's a completely rivetting read, for me at least. I read the book over two evenings & found it hard to put down. It's a fascinating insight into how 2cvs were produced & the appalling conditions & abuse the employees had to endure.

I'm not sure how Citroen allowed it to be published given its content - does anyone have any information on whether they tried but failed to ban publication?

The Choisy plant stood on what is now Parc Andre Citroen & is located on the left bank of the Seine.

After reading the book i googled to find out more about Linhart and whilst searching i came across this link allowing you to read the entire book online!

http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9062070

I hope it you find it as interesting as i did.

Neil.

I can only read to page 21 as it wants me to pay to read more.

it would appear that way. I did check before i posted it earlier; i entered a few different page numbers at random & each one was legible...

There is a 'free trial' subject to their terms & conditions, the specified free trial being, one day:



Looking again the free preview pages are as follows:

Free preview pages
1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 29, 59, 85, 107, 121, 137

It's a taster, a try before you buy!

My humble apologies.

If you're fluent in French you can buy a copy at a knock-down price:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT

Where can I get the english one, the trail pages made me want to read some thing .

It's quite hard to get hold of. I've not seen one yet on eBay, although they are showing up on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... 81&sr=1-14

Yes, it's a very interesting read indeed. It's a bit sad to think that our cars of freedom and happiness came from such a terrible place though.

Oi Bastock, you've still got my copy!

Ordered! Thanks for the link.

You can look at it like that jono, but let's face it, we all own shirts, shoes and goods in our house that were made in sweatshops, it's a sad fact of life!

Yes, I've often mused on that dreadful irony... and came to the uncomfortable conclusion that to avoid this kind of thing completely one would have to go and live in the woods, make one's own clothes, forage for wood and catch one's own food etc etc. Extreme, yes, and all very well if you have the energy to do that sort of thing... but imagine if we were all to do that!! It'd be like Mad Max in no time!!

With regard to the book, apparently Citroen could do nothing to stop it from being published, but they became extremely strict about granting access to the factory after it came out. Also, the book was banned in France, according to the 2CVGB Handbook.
Furthermore, as labour costs increased and car production became cheaper with the advent of robot welding and robot assembly (which Citroen could not take advantage of for the 2CV) the company took to recruiting and employing super-cheap labour from France's African colonies to keep the costs down. By the late 70s Citroen top brass couldn't stand the 2CV (high unit costs, low margins) but it's burgeoning popularity amongst the young and counter-culturalists at that time meant that they just couldn't kill it off, so they stepped up their efforts to find ways to make the car cheaper, which arguably translated to more and more exploitative working practices!! The African employees had even fewer labour rights than the previous workers at the factory, so by all accounts the labour conditions got worse and worse... and the workers also had to put up with abuse and intolerance from the people amongst whom they had to live.
This sort of thing is still going on (particularly in openly racist Italy, where I've seen it with my own eyes)...

This song springs to mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8BRbM52gpc