cotton - Greenmount Press

half-tracks, Kégresse escaped into Finland and finally arrived back
home in his native France.
The Bolsheviks commandeered the vehicles and used them
as military transports in action against the Polish army. It seems
that one of the half-tracks fell into the hands the Poles, who in
turn handed it over to their French allies. The French military saw
great potential in the simplicity and effectiveness of the friction
engagement tracks and approached the car maker André Citroen
to further develop the principle.
Hitherto, crawler tracks had been constructed with steel
grousers bolted to a steel chain, driven by a sprocket and
supported by rollers and a steel idler at the opposing end.
Kégresse’s design was lightweight, inexpensive, silent and
followed the contours of the ground, thus providing excellent
traction. Plus, it was not a daunting exercise to convert a
standard vehicle to take the tracks.
Citroen employed Kégresse with a brief to further develop
his unorthodox track design. The first Citroen Autochenille was
released in 1921. It was effectively a Citroen 10CV car equipped
with the friction engagement half-tracks. The Swiss Post Office
purchased several, fitted with snow skis in place of the front
wheels.
A clipping from a 1929 () Victorian newspaper, showing a
Kégresse Citreon climbing the steps of Parliament House,
Melbourne, as a promotional stunt. (IMJ archives)
Challenges
One of the great challenges yet unconquered in 1922 was for
a motor vehicle to be driven north to south across the Sahara.
This astonishing feat, hitherto considered an impossibility, was
achieved for Citroen in the latter part of that year, extending into
1923, by Georges Haardt and a dedicated team, driving a convoy
of no less than five 1425 cc Citroen-Kégresse specially equipped
desert vehicles.
The expedition attracted world wide publicity, which included
a report featured in the January 1924 edition of The National
Geographic Magazine.
Interestingly, each car had three seats, one reserved for a
possible local guide picked up along the way. The rear was
loaded with provisions, spare parts, charts, plus a rifle for each
man and (remarkably) a machine gun borrowed from a fighter
aircraft! In addition each car carried a tent, extra petrol tanks and
eight gallons of water.
Roaming Bedouin tribesmen, aloft on their camels, would
undoubtedly have been shocked to witness five motor vehicles
appearing over the sand dunes, where no cars had ever before
ventured.
A further expedition was successfully undertaken in 1923–24
when a Citroen-Kégresse convoy travelled from Algeria to The
Cape of Good Hope.
In 1934 four specially constructed Citreon-Kégresse cars
were shipped to Alberta, Canada, to form the nucleus of a Polar
expedition. A group of wealthy adventurers believed they could
drive the vehicles to the north pole!
But crossing the unforgiving frozen wastelands of northern
Canada proved a greater confrontation than crossing the sand
dunes of The Sahara. The Polar expedition was obliged to turn
back before it reached the half way point and had not even
sighted one polar bear! The rubberised tracks were unable to
cope with the scores of ice faults and ravines that crisscrossed
the route and all but one of the vehicles had to be abandoned.
Surprisingly this particular unit has been restored and is now in
an Alberta museum.
What followed
By now the friction engagement design of crawler tracks was
being deployed by various vehicle manufacturers. But care had
to be taken that the Kégresse patents were not violated. On May
The sole remaining Citroen of the ill - fated Canadian Polar
expedition of 1934. (Photo IMJ)
This Oliver OC4 was available with the Air - Track system,
using the Kégresse principle, but with a bogie self adjusting
undercarriage. (IMJ archives)
December 2012–January 2013 The Australian Cottongrower — 53