In my still-short time with my Citroën 2CV, I’ve come to respect the remarkable efficiency that seems to be the guiding light shining down upon every decision that was made in the engineering of the car. If there’s a part that could be eliminated, it’s not there. Things that don’t exist, generally, can’t break. The result is a wildly light, clever, and, yes, efficient machine. A stock 2CV is supposed to get about 43 MPG or so, which is fantastic. But it seems that wasn’t good enough for the famously eccentric designer Luigi Colani, who managed to build a very customized 2CV that got a shocking 133 miles per gallon.

Think about that! 138 mpg, way back in 1981! The 2CV has a gas tank about 6.5 gallons, so that would take the effective range of the car from about 280 miles to a staggering 864 miles! That would be enough to drive from New York to Atlanta without stopping, if you had such an urge and a truly colossal bladder.

Of course, Colani’s 2CV looked almost nothing like the archaic tin snail we all know and love. Really, did anything Colani design look like what you expect? Remember, this was a man whose take on a semi truck cab looked like this:

…and his take on a Volkswagen Polo looked like this:

Colani designed everything from forks to pianos to cars to hydrofoil boats, and all were designed with his signature biodynamic design language, and one doesn’t necessarily get the impression that his main goal was efficiency per se; Colani seemed to operate by his own set of rules and goals that originated either in his head, or, barring that, maybe the Codex Seraphinianus.

That’s sort of what puzzles me about his experimental take on the 2CV: the whole goal of the complete re-body was to, it seems, set a fuel economy record, and he seemed to have done just that, in 1981. Colani had always been interested in aerodynamics, but it usually seemed to come from a stylistic urge as opposed to an efficiency one. But not this time.

This time Colani seemed to mean business; the plastic body he wrapped the otherwise stock 2CV chassis in was slick and light. The frontal area was tiny, it had minimal protrusions of any sort, and an interesting Kamm-effect rear.

Only the distinctive three-stud wheels suggest the car’s true origins, and I’m surprised those weren’t covered with some manner of full wheel cover.

I can’t actually find any real numbers on what the drag coefficient of the final body was, but there are pictures of Colani himself seemingly playing with smoky streams in a wind tunnel, so some manner of wind-tunnel testing, even if it may have been more of vibe-aerodynamics variety, did take place.

It’s especially interesting to see underneath the body because it’s quite clear that it’s just stock 2CV mechanicals inside:

There’s the air-cooled flat-twin, there’s those distinctive curved suspension arms. All of this is pretty amazing when you think about the fact that the car they picked as the basis for their efficiency record was, in 1981, already a relic of a design at 33 years old. Aside from special low-rolling resistance tires from Goodyear, the re-designed body was the only significant change.

But what a change it was! After testing at Continental’s Contidrome track, they managed to use only 1.7727 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers, at a speed of 66 km/hr. I’m getting these numbers off of what was written right on the car, just before it was doused in champagne, as you can see here:

So, in Freedom Units, that comes to 132.7 miles per gallon at a steady 41 mph. That’s pretty amazing for a 1981 experiment based on a deliberately crude and basic 1948 mechanical design.

I know we usually think of Colani as something of a stunt designer, a flamboyant showman, but it’s great to see that he was capable of some genuinely practical feats, too.

(top image: Colani Design, Motorcar Classics, Intel)

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Look at me, using our beloved “Holy Grail” appellation right here in a Cold Start! And I think I’m using it pretty accurately here, because what I want to tell you about is about as close as I can think of to an automotive Holy Grail: something impossibly rare, and perhaps irretrievably lost. I’m talking about the only art car known to have been painted by Pablo Picasso.

Yes, that’s right! An art car, not unlike the famous art cars painted by artists like Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol, but this one was a 1955 Citroën DS, enhanced with painting by Picasso, creating a work that Picasso called Las Guirnaldas de la Paz, or, the Garlands of Peace.

Picasso was, of course, needs no introduction, as I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with the artist that gave the world such works as Guernica and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the work that started the Cubist movement.

We all know Picasso; what we know less about is the ’55 Citroën that he painted. The car was borrowed by Mexican journalist Manuel Mejido from a friend, and the journalist took advantage of Picasso’s gratitude to Mexico for taking Spanish refugees in 1939 to secure a rare interview with the artist.

Quite broke, Mejido made a deal with a pair of documentarians from Colombia and a French woman to join him on the trip in exchange for covering the expenses. As the story goes, Picasso spoke with the group for a while, then left mysteriously, returning a while later and demanding everyone to leave.

As they approached the borrowed Citroën, they saw that Picasso had painted the car with figures, trees, and flowers, in Picasso’s signature rapid, gestural style. Picasso, delighted, told them the work on the car was of garlands of peace, which is where the work took its name.

I can barely make out the painted elements on the car in this picture; I want to see more!

The value of the car was not lost on Mejido, who drove it immediately to an art gallery, where he sold it for $6,000 (nearly $70,000 today), and gave the friend who loaned him the car a grand, which I suppose roughly covered the cost of the car? I think he probably should have paid the dude more; I mean, he didn’t even ask!

It seems that the picture above is the only known photograph of the DS; here’s a picture of Picasso with another French car, a Renault Dauphine he owned:

That doesn’t really have anything to do with this story, but I liked the picture. Wire wheels?

Anyway, the fate of the Picasso-painted Citroën is not known. It may be in the hands of a private collector, but, if so, they seem to be keeping the car a secret.

I suspect it still exists and hasn’t been scrapped or anything like that; its value was understood at the time, and it feels unlikely anyone would have lost track of the car. So where is it? I’d love to get a better look at the thing; I have no idea what its value could be now, but I suspect it could be the most valuable Citroën DS in existence.

You know, one of my favorite Picasso works happens to be one made with vehicular parts; it’s just called Bull’s Head, and is an assemblage of a bicycle seat and handlebars:

Damn, that’s clever.

And since we’re talking about Picasso, may as well remind you about how he was never called an asshole:

Where is this DS? I’m so curious now. Has it been in the same hands since it was sold to that art gallery? Has it clandestinely changed hands multiple times? I have no idea. I do hope one day it’ll be found, and available for the world to see and enjoy.

It’s also worth noting that much later, in 1998, Picasso’s family signed a sweet deal with Citroën to use Picasso’s name on cars, like the Xsara Picasso:

I wonder what old Pablo would have thought about that?

The post This Picasso-Painted Citröen DS Is Probably The Greatest Art Car Holy Grail And It Has Never Been Found appeared first on The Autopian.

Texting while driving is illegal in 49 out of 50 states because it takes both your eyes off the road and takes at least one of your hands from the controls, making for an incredibly dangerous situation (Montana doesn’t have a law banning it, if you’re curious). I’ve only attempted texting while driving a few times in my life, and it felt sketchy enough for me to swear off the practice for good.

Banging out texts to the group chat at the speed limit is one thing—at least you’re only breaking one law. But some people even text and drive while they’re breaking the speed limit, which feels like an even more potent recipe for disaster. According to a new study released by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), there is a correlation between speeding and cell phone use. And it’s not the good kind.

The study, which used data from insurance companies’ safe-driving apps on driver phones to collect data, found that drivers are actually more likely to use their phones while speeding. According to the IIHS, this flips the commonly held notion that drivers usually only use their phones at slower speeds, and highlights how frequently people might be combining two dangerous driving activities.

The Results Paint A Scary Picture

In the nationwide study, the IIHS found that as people increased their speed over the speed limit, their cellphone usage also increased. The correlation shifts greatly depending on what type of road the user was on. For example, on highways and other limited-access roads, where you need to enter via a dedicated on-ramp, the share of driving time handling a phone rose by 12% for every 5 mph drivers went over the limit. But on roads where you have to be more actively involved in driving, that percentage dropped. From the IIHS’s release:

On other roads, such as arterials and routes that connect towns, every 5 mph over the local limit was linked to a smaller 3% increase in phone handling. These roads often have traffic lights, intersections, roundabouts and stop signs that require drivers to take action periodically, even when traffic is flowing.

You’d think that as speed limits grow, people would be more attentive behind the wheel, since stuff is going by faster and incidents can occur in the blink of an eye. But according to the data, the opposite is happening. Scarily, the IIHS found that phone usage actually goes up as the speed limits increase. From the report:

The increases were larger on roads with higher posted limits. On limited-access roads with 70 mph limits, for example, for every 5 mph a vehicle exceeded the limit there was a 9% larger increase in phone handling than on similar roads with 55 mph limits.

A similar pattern showed up on roads with more access than freeways. Compared with roads posted at 25 or 30 mph, there was a 3% larger increase in phone handling for every 5 mph drivers exceeded the limit on 45 or 50 mph roads and a 7% larger increase on 55 mph roads.

Why are people mixing and matching these two law-breaking activities? The IIHS has several theories. The simplest is that drivers who take more risks—a.k.a., those who more often use their phone behind the wheel or speed regularly—are more likely to risk doing those things at the same time. Another factor, according to the organization, is related to stress. It references research that shows phone use and speeding spike (separately, independent of each other) during rush hour and school drop-off times.

The IIHS says that it could also be as simple as drivers responding to road cues like lighter traffic, fewer pedestrians, and long gaps between traffic devices like stop signs and stoplights, where you actually have to be an active participant in driving. It sort of makes sense—when you’re cruising down an open, high-speed highway with no traffic and tons of visibility, you might feel more comfortable grabbing your phone to send off a quick text, even if you’re already going 10 mph over the limit.

How They Got The Data

Depending on how you feel about data tracking and big corporations watching your every move, the methodology for getting this level of data will be either deeply fascinating or deeply unsettling. The IIHS analyzed nearly 600,000 trips across the United States between July and October 2024, excluding Alaska, California, Hawaii, and New York. Such a large sample size wouldn’t have been possible if not for the immense amount of tracking data that can now be extracted from each user’s phone, thanks to telemetry-monitoring apps tied to insurance. From the report:

More nuanced information about driver behavior has recently become available with the proliferation of safe-driving apps. These apps, which promise cost savings for drivers who enroll, let insurers adjust premiums based on how each person drives. Using a smartphone’s GPS and other sensors, the apps track speed and location, time of day, events like hard braking and rapid acceleration, and phone use. With large amounts of aggregated data, researchers can now measure phone use much more comprehensively than before.

The study included only trips that lasted longer than 18 minutes and involved at least two minutes on an interstate. The data, supplied to the IIHS by Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT), also excluded any driving time spent more than 5 mph under the speed limit, to eliminate data produced from heavy traffic.

If you’re wondering exactly how the study determined a driver was handling their phone while driving, the IIHS provides a pretty detailed explanation that makes me scared to even touch my phone while I’m in my car:

Drivers were counted as handling their phones when the phone’s internal gyroscope detected a significant rotation while the screen was unlocked. The phone-handling rate was calculated as total phone-handling time divided by total driving time. To identify speeding, CMT matched each trip’s GPS location to a speed-limit database. The IIHS researchers then used statistical methods to estimate phone-handling rates for limited-access roads and other thoroughfares, across different posted limits and with different levels of speeding (for example, 5-10 mph over a 60-65 mph limit on a limited-access road).

Bad driver or not, it’s a reminder that no, you’re not crazy, and yes, your phone is monitoring your every move at all times.

What Can Be Done?

While those monitoring apps mentioned above incentivize safer driving by offering lower premiums to people who go the speed limit and don’t touch their phone while behind the wheel, the results from this study prove they can’t ever really fully eliminate the problem.

Police are already on the lookout for speeders and cell phone users, but most of the time, those two types of enforcement happen separately. The IIHS suggests the best way to approach this is to develop safety cameras that monitor for both speed and cellphone use at the same time. Road cameras designed to catch phone users in the act have been used overseas, in places like China, for years now.

Another idea the IIHS doesn’t mention in its news piece on the study, but does mention in the study abstract, is to make roads seem more convoluted to keep drivers’ attention:

Countermeasures that raise perceived roadway complexity may also reduce the likelihood of both phone manipulation and speeding.

How exactly road builders would go about making highways more complex isn’t clear. Maybe a bollard that pops up from the ground once in a while, at a random time in the day? Or a stoplight that turns red every 45.6 minutes? Maybe highway workers can simply start occasionally releasing robot dogs into the road that drivers need to avoid. That would certainly get me off my phone and lock into the act of driving. If you have a better idea, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com

The post Study Says Drivers Are More Likely To Use Their Phones While Speeding Which Makes Me Way More Scared Of Everyone Else On The Road appeared first on The Autopian.

I’m all for being excited about a particular car or kind of car. I want to see and hear from people absolutely smitten with whatever their favorite car is. I want to hear them gush and excitedly point out features and make gleeful videos of them in and around such cars. I want all of that vicarious automotive excitement, grind it up into a powder, and I’ll do the fattest rail of it, through a rolled up $100 bill, off a mirror. But when it takes on weird nationalistic tones or makes baseless claims of dominance over half a world’s car manufacturers, it’s less fun.

Maybe that’s why I feel the urge to let the metaphorical air out of the tires of this pro-Chinese car online influencer and how he portrays the way the Li Auto L9 deals with tires with the air let out.

Specifically, it has to do with a tweet from someone named Yaw who likes to tweet about how great Chinese cars are, and, on its own, that’s fine! Compared to some of the other crap this guy tweets, being pro-cars built in China stuff is great. Chinese companies are making some pretty fantastic cars right now! And I get that they have been subjected to a lot of stigmas about quality, which may explain a certain level of defensiveness. But there’s something about claiming “the game is over for Western car manufacturers” that just makes these sorts of things eye-rolling:

Bro the game is over for Western car manufacturers. ???? pic.twitter.com/wFvjN5oVdW

— yaw. (@yabbanx) April 24, 2026

But, more importantly, the feature highlighted in this tweet as what will end the game for Western car manufacturers: the ability to change a tire without a jack, thanks to articulated wheels. Well, that’s old news. Like, over-70-years-old-level old news, because the first mass-produced car with the ability to do this was introduced in 1955 – the legendary Citroën DS.

It’s literally the exact same party trick being shown in that video of the Li Auto L9, lifting up its injured limb to allow a jackstand to be placed underneath, which then allows the wheel to be replaced without resorting to using a jack to lift and support the car, like how some sort of filthy animal would. The Citroën DS can do this very same thing. Look:

That’s what the 2026 Li Auto did, only Citroën has been doing this, with its hydropneumatic suspension system, since the mid ’50s.

Want to see Jay Leno demonstrate this, too? Sure you do:

Look at that! That’s cool as hell! Sure, it’s still cool when the Li Auto does it, but gotta give credit where it’s due, and our pals at Citroën cracked this nut long ago. Plus, the DS’s hydropneumatic suspension was not only capable of changing the ride height and making jacks obsolete, but it could help the car drive in a controllable manner even when its tires have been shot out.

That’s why the DS is credited with saving former French President Charles De Gaulle from an assassination attempt: his Citroën presidential car was riddled with bullets and had at least three of its tires shot out, but still managed to speed away and ferry him to safety:

The clever suspension of the DS could – and, it’s worth noting, self-leveling suspension of the DS did all these things without any electronic computing devices whatsoever – allow the car to drive on three wheels if necessary.

Don’t just take my word for it – here’s a segment from an episode of CHiPs that features this fascinating ability of the DS!

That’s not some special effect – CHiPs was far too cheap to do anything like that, since they blew all their budget smashing cars into each other – the DS could really drive just fine and level even with a rear wheel missing.

In fact, since we’re already showing videos of DSes doing bonkers things, let’s just go all out and watch a lot of DSes in movie crashes and stunts and whatever:

I suppose we’ve gotten off track a good bit, but I think my point still stands: it’s great to champion the cars you love, and you should! But as soon as you’re posting videos of car features about which you have done zero historical research and proclaiming the end of half the world’s car industry, maybe take a moment and put down the phone and go for a nice drive, instead.

Top graphic images: X; Citroën; Netflix

The post Influencers Hyping Chinese Cars Are Bragging About A Feature French Cars Have Had Since The 1950s appeared first on The Autopian.

An under-the-public-radar federal rule change is shrinking pay for migrant farmworkers at the same time a highly debated new state law is going to cut into their overtime pay. 

The U.S. Department of Labor has changed the way wages are calculated for H-2A seasonal workers and is allowing employers to pay $2 to $3 less per hour to those workers who receive housing as part of their work contracts. The federal government requires that housing for H-2A workers.

This change championed by the Trump administration will affect the estimated 3,500 H-2A workers who toil in Colorado’s fields and orchards each year. 

The Department of Labor isn’t calling this a wage decrease or a pay deduction. The new rule refers to it as a “downward compensation adjustment.” It doesn’t show up as a deduction on paychecks. The paychecks are simply smaller.

“We can’t call it a pay deduction. It’s a housing adjustment to the wage,” said Liz Talbott, who handles the accounting for H-2A workers at Talbott Farms in Palisade.

Whatever the term used to describe the change, this new federal rule means that H-2A farmworkers in Colorado who earned $17.84 per hour last year, will get $15.16 this year. 

The change could have dropped wages even further except that Colorado’s minimum wage requirement prevented the housing adjustment from taking a bigger bite out of paychecks. The hourly wage for Colorado farmworkers can’t go below $15.16. In some states without that minimum wage protection, H-2A farmworkers will receive as little as $9 per hour.

The new rule does not require employers to pay less, so some are opting to ignore the Department of Labor rule and to keep wages at the same level as last year.

“We are not changing it,” said Gwen Cameron, who employs 11 H-2A workers in the field crew at her Rancho Durazno orchards in Palisade. “We can still be profitable.”

She said she knows of other farms, including Fortunate Fruit in Dominguez Canyon between Delta and Grand Junction, and Topp Fruits in the North Fork Valley, that have also opted to keep wages at the 2025 level. 

News of lower wages delivered just before farmworkers headed north 

At Talbott Farms near Palisade where 95% of the workers are employed with H-2A visas, co-owner Bruce Talbott said they will make use of the new “formulation.” He said labor makes up 85% of his cost to produce peaches.

“I think this is good for the industry and good for the workers,” Bruce Talbott said. “These guys feel like they have won the lottery when they come here. They are treated well. They are still quite happy. These guys have no expenses except for food. They send 95% of their wages home.” 

He said this season some of those workers will be living in a newly completed 24-unit bunkhouse at Talbotts that can hold 48 workers.

Tuxedo Corn in Montrose County has long prided itself on fair treatment of its workers and is a participant in the national Fair Food Program. It has also opted to pay the lower wage.

“It gives me no pleasure to do that,” said David Harold, who co-owns Tuxedo with his father, John Harold. “We are adjusting everything we can to be legal but reduce our costs.”

Harold insists the new federal rule does not mean he is charging his workers for housing that Tuxedo has long provided at no charge. 

“I am not charging for housing,” Harold said. “I am paying the lower rate allowed because I provide housing.”

Harold said he advised his H-2A workers at the end of last year’s season that there might be cutbacks in paychecks this year.

Some migrant farmworkers had no idea about the lower pay until they showed up at the American Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico, said Iriana Medina Roy, the executive director of La Plaza, a resource center for migrant workers in Palisade. 

H-2A rules require migrant workers to travel to Monterrey to sign their work contracts and board buses that take them to jobs across the United States. Some reportedly opted to return home when they learned of the lower pay. 

“The workers are not happy. But work is work,” Medina Roy said. “For me, it seems not just. It is not fair.”

Cameron said there is still a lot of confusion among workers about the wage adjustment that is part of a byzantine set of tiered pay changes called the Adverse Effect Wage Rate.  

The primary purpose of the Adverse Effect Wage Rate is to prevent the employment of foreign workers from negatively impacting the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers.

Calculating wages to fit within that framework includes having to establish pay levels based on different tiers of skill levels and on the fact that domestic workers generally do not receive housing benefits as migrant workers do.

Liz Talbott said she tried to let workers know about the change coming in their paychecks, but for the first group of 50 Talbott’s workers who came to the Monterrey consulate in January and February, there was little information from the Department of Labor to pass on to workers. Growers say they are still sorting through the perplexing rules — an effort that has been slowed and complicated by the recent government shutdown.

“We didn’t receive a lot of guidance so we didn’t have a lot of information for our workers,” she said.

She said she hopes to be able to provide better information for 45 H-2A workers who will come to Talbott Farms in June. 

Bruce Talbott said the bigger concern for his H-2A workers now is the new state legislation, Senate Bill 121, that will increase the point at which agricultural workers are eligible for overtime pay to 56 hours per week from 48 starting on Jan. 1, 2027.

Legislation passed in 2021 that went into effect last year had set the overtime threshold at 48 hours for most workers who are classified as highly seasonal. During peak weeks of work that threshold can go up to 56 hours for some small growers. Workers must be paid time and a half over that threshold. 

Senate Bill 121 squeaked by on a vote of 33-32 after some of the most contentious debates on the House Floor this session centered on worker protections and help for struggling farmers. The bill is currently on Gov. Jared Polis’ desk awaiting his signature.