What Was The First Successful Car With A Modern Windscreen?

What Was The First Successful Car With A Modern Windscreen?

Modern cars windscreens have to a certain degree reached a point of standardisation, with structural, sturdy curved windscreens helping to provide clear undistorted views for drivers as well as keep them safe should an accident happen.

This is also a reason why, without windscreen insurance, they can get fairly expensive to repair or replace, something that is a legal requirement under the Highway Code.

The first car to be fitted with a curved panoramic windscreen was the surreal Rumpler Tropfenwagen, which managed to simultaneously look like the product of a Jules Verne novel and the Space Age at the same time.

It was not a success, nor was the similarly ambitious Chrysler Airflow in 1934. In fact, it would take over two decades from the release of the latter for a car to release that would not only revolutionise the windscreen but be a massive success in the process.

Goddess From The Sky

Once described by Death of the Author scribe and philosopher Roland Barthes as appearing to have “fallen from the sky” akin to a “purely magical object”, the Citroen DS caused a tremendous stir when it was first showcased at the 1955 Paris Motor Show, pointed to the sky akin to a rocket.

During the entire show, 80,000 deposits were taken for the car, which was a record that stood until 2016, and 743 were taken in the first fifteen minutes. For context, that is nearly one order per second at the start of the show.

This was vindication for 18 years of development that had started around the time the Chrysler Airflow had been dismissed as a strange-looking failure in Detroit but had started to prove influential around the world.

Its name was a play on words for the French word for goddess “deesse”, and it was the first car that was successful because of its aerodynamic designs, as well as its handling, braking and ride quality.

Rather famously, or infamously, its unusual styling and performance characteristics actually saved the life of French President Charles de Gaulle, as an unarmoured DS managed to drive away from an ambush at full speed despite two punctured tyres and riddled with bullets.

A major part of its aerodynamic styling was its sweeping panoramic windscreen, which whilst hardly the first curved windscreen, was likely the first to take full advantage of the benefits of a panoramic view beyond not having a metal pillar in the middle of the driving view.

No car up until that point had been able to provide the level of visibility that the DS could with its windscreen, and it was as critical to the aerodynamics as the rocket-like bodywork, curved bonnet and covered wheels.

Ultimately, the Citroen DS sold for over 20 years, was successful in rally racing for 15 of them and sold nearly 1.5m units, inspiring windscreen manufacturing for the rest of the century.

Whilst there have been exceptions, with the lower, flatter supercar windscreens of the 

Lamborghini Countach and Ferrari F40 and the completely flat Tesla Cybertruck windscreen, almost every other car design since 1955 has been inspired in some way by the Citroen DS.