I remember watching Citroens demonstrating losing a wheel, and continuing to drive, in the early 1970s.
Citroens are cool. Maybe their build quality wasn't so good, or they were too expensive, as I've not seen them on this side of the pond.
Their build quality is fine, at least contemporarily to the rest of the market; of course today, we would find its steel pitiful. It's not without reason that people who maintain Citroëns of that era tend to replace the panels with fibreglass ones.
Additionally, as Citroën pulled out, the maintenance network in North America began to falter, as the suspension system required significant know-how. There are still a dedicated group of Citroën fans in North America (albeit small), and I met a lot of them when I drove from coast to coast (and back again) back in 2017 in a 1998 Citroën Xantia. A car that may not seem particularly interesting to Europeans (although it was the Activa V6 model), but it was extremely rare in North America.
"It is noteworthy that the previous record holder (set in 1999) was the Citroën Xantia 3.0i V6 Activa, an unassuming family car with a unique active roll bar system.[15]"
Were headlights bouncing up and down a problem back then?
Sounds so ridiculous, especially considering there is no regulation about the headlights’ actual height/color/intensity/angle, which causes many drivers to blind others these days.
You can have any colour, as long as it's 6000-ish K.
In France, every two years you gotta have your car legally checked. Misaligned headlights is ground for not passing, or being fined if the police notices it in between.
Ever since high power Xe headlights are a thing, headlight leveling is mandatory to be automatic.
p.s. long time ago i bought a 15y old hydraulic Citroen, drove it for 10 years.. the hydraulics was less breaking than the engine :/ . Now i have another (recent) Citroen but that "road-surface-ignorant" feeling of the hydraulics is completely gone.