Styled by Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni, the DS is known for its aerodynamic futuristic body design and innovative technology, including a hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_DS
The car's appearance and innovative engineering captured the imagination of the public and the automotive industry and to a France still deep in reconstruction after the devastation of World War II, the DS motor car was a symbol of French ingenuity
Outside of France, the car's radical and cosmopolitan design appealed to non-conformists and a station wagon version was introduced in 1958. Later the innermost headlight swiveled by up to 80° as the driver steered, lighting the inside of a bend. This allowed the driver to see where his eyes were looking – instead of just straight ahead.
Alas, M V Tronson 58, never owned one but would have enjoyed the experience. They are now in a league of their own as collectors items and beyond his purchasing capacity as a faith financed missionary.
All this goes straight to the crux of the issue of all combustion engines. Huge resources are being given to developing motor vehicles with anything but a combustion engine. So where is this leading to, and what should we do about our combustion engine motor vehicles, if anything at all?
Almost everyone uses their high-emission motor vehicles to engage in their daily lives.
We use our powers of reason in deciding how best to care for our families. For example, we sometimes feel it best to pick up the kids from school, sports and social activities, to ensure that no harm comes to them.
He also points out that our first-world conveniences such as home-cooking and dishwashers (and other luxuries) are all blessings from God, and sometimes our modern appliances use energy more efficiently and therefore produce fewer emissions, than those monsters our grandparents used, or those small coal fires used by individual rural homes in some developing nations.
Advances in technology are critical he says, and he freely acknowledges the motor vehicle he drives today is much more carbon emission efficient than the one he drove twenty years ago.
M V Tronson noted that he may be a sceptic, but he is not the only one. He feels that there is a point in which pontificating about emissions is excessive. Science is the human art of noting today's facts and constructing a theory to explain them. As the observations of the facts improve, the theories changes quite regularly as they should do, but he suggests that one shouldn't gamble one's life on the latest press or politician's fashionable '10-second-grab' interpretation of complex scientific models or theories.
He advises people to apply good wholesome 'commons sense' and not to be run-over by such issues. Scientific models are only as good as the data that is put in; and this data is only as good as humans can gather.
Although records and ways of using technology to assess past events are improving all the time, human beings can only ever have the viewpoint of a short time scale compared with the whole of creation and the Earth's ecological systems.
For example, comments Mark Tronson, twenty years ago, scientific observations indicated that Earth was heading for another ice age, whereas more recent models, based on other observations, indicate a warming trend.
Recently, even Peter Costello has been lamenting the loss of urgency on the climate change issue after Copenhagen. Perhaps it's time to give it a rest, there are also other pressing matters!
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-greatest-moral-conundrum-of-our-time-x2026-until-the-next-one-20100330-rb8s.html
Each of us have an innumerable number of calls upon our time that demands the convenience of a motor vehicle. M V Tronson is of the view, one does not stop engaging life as effectively as one is able by not utilising the practical use of our motor vehicles.