CITRON, ANDR-GUSTAVE

born Feb. 5, 1878, Paris, France died July 3, 1935, Paris French engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford's methods of mass production to the European automobile industry. Citron graduated from the cole Polytechnique in 1898 and thereafter worked as an engineer and an industrial designer. In 1908 he helped the Mors automobile firm increase its production from 125 cars to 1,200 cars per year. At the outbreak of World War I Citron persuaded the French army of the need to mass-produce munitions. In 1915 he built a munitions plant whose production of shells reached 55,000 per day. Upon this success he was given the responsibility of organizing the supplying of all French munitions plants with certain vital raw materials. After the war Citron converted his original arms factory into a plant to mass-produce a small, inexpensive automobile; the first Citron car came off the assembly line in 1919. New Citron factories were constructed, and his firm became one of the largest auto-manufacturing companies in France. Refusing to retrench during the Great Depression, Citron introduced the only popular front-wheel-drive car of its time, the Citron Seven (1934), but he lost control of his company after it went bankrupt in 1934 and was reorganized in 1935. Citron financed various scientific expeditions, including one that traveled 8,000 miles (13,000 km) by car from Beirut to Peking (193132). The lighting of the Arc de Triomphe and of the Place de la Concorde were gifts from Citron to the city of Paris.