It is 1974-1975, indeed, the Citroen CX, the long expected successor of the legendary DS is presented extensively to the European press. A press presentation like that of course also includes many thousands of kilometers of tests. To highlight the qualities of their newest car, they took people from every layer of the society on a trip from the far north to Paris.

After the new CX2000 and 2200 had been extensively tested by the European press all these press cars were shipped from Le Bourget to Swedish Lapland. The intention was to proof that the new CX could deal with extreme cold and badly paved roads equally well as it could with wide and flat highways. The test pilots where bakers, construction workers, engineers, young and old, in order to appeal to a wide audience.

The test pilots were arriving not far from Gällivare, an area where it always dark during winter, and always light in summer. The 35.000 inhabitants live of fishing and hunting. Where the skies are unspoiled, as is the water that is flowing through the pine forests. To illustrate the difficult and varying conditions that the new car would have to proof itself in Citroen named this trip the "Raid Arctique".

Our test pilots arrived in the evening. They were given a large dinner of typical meals from the area, such as reindeer and marinated salmon. After a good night's sleep in typical wooden cottages the trip to France could start. The route passed from Sweden through Germany and Belgium to France. After driving over gravel roads with deep holes in Sweden, they arrived in Germany to drive at top speed legally on the famous "autobahn". They were mostly impressed with the comfort and the large interior space of the CX. After six days of driving in this "voiture" everybody arrived, still fresh, at the Champs Elysees in Paris. There had been several promotional stops during the trip, such as on the "iron square" in Brussels, where the general public had a chance to see the CX.

For the CX this was a big test, that had to convince the critics that the successor of the DS was equally inovative, but more fuel economic, more comfortable and particularly reliable. And this it did show. The CX's already had 169.000km on their odometers before leaving, and every car finished the 3400km from cold Lapland to the warm homeland without any problems. The fuel economy was very important due to the oil crisis, and also there the CX did not dissapoint with an average fuel consumption over all cars of less than 10l/100km.