Happily not! But I can see a good case for banning all hydrocarbon fuelled vehicles from densely populated areas. That would make life better for a lot of people.
Damn… Got my hopes up there with the thread title…
Oh well, maybe next time…
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Not the most elegant car they ever made.
The frowning face gives the impression that it’s engine hurts - which was probably true!
I like quirky cars!!
Me too. I once owned a Daf 33
They were bought out by Volvo who wanted their “Variomatic” belt driven, automatic transmission, but never quite managed to get it to work very well in any of their cars.
My pal’s Ami. He’s thinking of have it sprayed a more appealing colour. He bought it in the South West and we drove it back with a dodgy fuel line. It took days 
one of those memorable trips.
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I think the Prius uses “variomatic” but with steel instead of rubber belts. The rubber belt wasted a lot of power. I had a Daf 66 Marathon for a while.
Twin headlights, there’s posh!
Possible of interest to automotive nerds -
"Because the system does not have separate gears, but one (continuously shifting) gear and a separate ‘reverse mode’ (as opposed to a reverse gear), the transmission works in reverse as well, giving it the interesting side effect that one can drive backwards as fast as forwards. As a result, in the former Dutch annual backward driving world championship, the DAFs had to be put in a separate competition because no other car could keep up. Thus, these very cheap and simple cars were the ‘formula one’ in this competition. "
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Yes Mike, it’s an Estate Club model. Twin round headlights. My pal does love his bit of luxury 
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There are conical disks on the engine side and on the driven wheel side.The disks moved towards and away from each other thus squeezing the belt and increasing or decreasing the circumference of the “gear”. There were two sets of those side by side in each car I think. The problem was that the rubber bands sapped a load of power. Other manufactures, Toyota and maybe Fiat adopted the same principle but inside a small enclosed gearbox with steel belts thus reducing the space the transmission took up and the wasted friction on the disks. Under hard acceleration I found the engine noise quite annoying because the engine just went to max torque and stayed constante while the rubber bands seamlessly altered the ratios. It sounded more like a jet engine that a ICE or an aero engine where the revs stay the same but the propellor pitch changes.
Reportedly around 30%, but in practise the car was not noticeably thirsty. Possibly because drivers of manual cars do not always make the best use of the gears. I often beat more powerful cars away from the lights without flooring the pedal.
Given that “wasted” power inevitably appears as heat that suggests something got pretty toasty.
Probably explains why it wasn’t so good on Volvo’s bigger, heavier cars.
Interesting to discover that the Variomatic drive is still used on many small scooters. And a simpler version can be found on most ride-on mowers. But Kevlar reinforced drive belts seem to last well. Cam belts must also create a lot of heat, I imagine.
An interesting question, though they are only pushing valve springs. Chains can also still cause problems. BMW had a big chain problem on the One series, which was kept pretty quiet. It was a BIG problem because the timing chain is at the back of the engine 
Probably seemed a good idea at the time.
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John,
If he has all those Citroens why does he need one of these?
The original Citroen Ami he has will be fine for pottering around in (we have a Citroen Hehari for much the same purpose).
Yes, there are the usual questions/debates about the cost (financial and environmental) for keeping an older car for pottering around vs the same costs applied to having a new car manufactured/financed and run. Some of that comparison will be based on personal preferences and affluence.
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It’s beyond me Graham 
He had a DS Usine decopatable also until a few years ago. He just likes Citroens. He’s had the DS and the SM restored at least twice - bodywork and mechanicals. Both are in great nick now. I suppose it’d be hard to part with them, and I can understand that. They cost virtually nothing to insure and given the miles they’re driven the running costs aren’t much either. He actually uses the C6 most of the time.
He had a Mehari (a four seat white one with nice blue candy-stripe seats) but it was stolen from his drive when they were away. The Ami was a sort of consolation present to himself after loosing the Mehari 
Seems all the more unbelievable that somebody would want to spend money on a new car having spent all that money keeping far oldder cars on the road.
Our two 530D Beemers are now all but 20 years old, between the 3 of us we do far less than 15,000 miles a year in the two of them. The mileage for our ’83 Citroen Mehari is negligible. Admittedly we do our own maintenance on all three but that is a function of their reliability/simplicity.
To each his own,
Grahame.
Grahame Pigney
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Well, I don’ think the new Ami really counts as a “car” Grahame, more a pet. My pal likes cars, as do I. We’re of that generation. My twenty-nine year old daughter likes a nice car but one is sufficient for her. Kids IMO don’t have the same interest as my pals and I did at their age. Over the last couple of years I disposed of three (two of which I was really fond of) in order to cut back butI still have four (plus my wife’s, but that doesn’t really count 
Classic cars have been a good investment over the last twenty years (if you ignore restoration costs) and a pleasure to own. There are still a few I’d buy if ones in the right condition and price came along.