This C42 showroom is where the company organises exhibitions and shows its vehicles and concept cars. Citroën persuaded the owner of the Alda business, Fernand Charron, to lend him the show-room, which is still in use today. The first production Type A emerged from the factory, located at Quai de Javel, Vaugirard, Paris, at the end of May 1919 and in June it was exhibited at a show room at Number 42, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris which normally sold Alda cars. The result was the Type A, announced to the press in March 1919, just four months after the guns fell silent. André Citroën's mandate was characteristically demanding and characteristically simple: to produce an all-new design for a 10 HP car that would be better equipped, more robust and less costly to produce than any rival product at the time. In February 1917 Citroën contacted another engineer, Jules Salomon, who already had a considerable reputation within the French automotive sector as the creator, in 1909, of a little car called Le Zèbre. Long before that happened, however, he had modified his vision and decided, like Henry Ford, that the best post-war opportunities in auto-making would involve a lighter car of good quality, but made in sufficient quantities to be priced enticingly. The decision to switch to automobile manufacturing was taken as early as 1916, which is the year when Citroën asked the engineer Louis Dufresne, previously with Panhard, to design a technically-sophisticated 18HP automobile for which he could use his factory once peace returned. Citroën was already experienced in the automotive business, thanks to a successful six-year stint working with Mors between 1908 and the outbreak of war. André Citroën built armaments for France during World War I after the war however, he realised that, unless he planned ahead he would have a modern factory without a product.

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