Citroën La Janais, 60 years of an industrial turning point -

BRETONS - PSA

It is a feast day in Chartres-de-Bretagne on this Saturday September 10, 1960. Arriving from Châteaubriant, on the road to Rennes where he will sleep the same evening, the President of the Republic, Charles de Gaulle in person, makes a short stop in the afternoon to inaugurate the new factory of the car manufacturer Citroën.

The Head of State has been on tour in Brittany for four days now.

A visit with very paternalistic accents, during which the ex-hero of Free France, at the height of his popularity, declares: “France expects a lot from its Breton children”.

He paid tribute in particular to the resistance fighters on the island of Sein, visited the National Center for Telecommunications Studies in Lannion, and praised in Morlaix the ongoing modernization of agriculture.

At a place called La Janais, in Chartres-de-Bretagne, on this sunny weekend, the general is coming to see the new emblem of industrial Brittany to complete his journey in the region.

For the occasion, he must symbolically put into service the first press of the stamping workshop of the production line of the future Citroën Ami 6. “Unfortunately, as nothing happened when the Head of State pressed the button

ad hoc

, the procession had to leave without the machine being set in motion, ”wrote the special envoy of Ouest-France in his report the day after.

"We soon had the explanation of the incident: the machines were not faulty, but a power failure had occurred at the same time of the presidential visit."

An annoying hiccup, but without consequence: in March of the following year, the activity began on site and, in October 1961, the first Ami 6 left the factory.

It then already employs a thousand people and will count up to fourteen thousand ten years later, making this site what was expected of it: one of the flagships of the contemporary Breton economy.

(...)

Discover the rest of this article in the Bretons magazine n ° 168 of October 2020

This article is produced by the Bretons magazine and hosted by 20 Minutes.

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