The article was graciously borrowed with permission from Citroen Autoclub Canada’s Spring 2003 Newsletter.

by John McCulloch

While many of you long time Citroën fans link John and Greg Long with

Escargot Motors did you ever ask how they got into such an enterprise?

George Dyke and I asked ourselves that very question. So in August at

the I.C.C.C.R. in Amherst, George sat down with Greg and John to answer our questions. The origins of their interest in Citroëns is a very

interesting and frequently hilarious story. This is what we discovered.

It all began in Victoria, British Columbia in the late 1960’s and early

70s. John had developed an interest in Citroëns through reading about the car and even seeing the odd DS driving the genteel streets of Victoria where there was a Citroën dealer.

One day he noticed there was a salmon ID-19 with a white roof for sale. Penniless but hopeful, he approached the owner to make a deal. John was promptly told that three hundred dollars was the price and that was that. A year later John again tried to obtain the car, but this time he went with three of his friends. Rather than ask the owner to sell him the car, he asked him to donate the it to the Citroën Car Club he and his friends had founded at Mount Douglas High School in Victoria. Of course, to make the transfer legal, it would necessary for John to be the owner of record. Through this inventive approach, John got (and still has) his first Citroën.

The Club (read John) took the car back to the shop at school and began

working to get it running. When repairs were complete, the car moved to John and Greg’s house (for safe storage no doubt... ed.). John drove

the car until completing high school. At this point John left for Europe on a grand tour and gave the car to a friend of his to keep in his absence.

The friend drove the car for a while and then parked it behind his house where children played in it, ripped the seats, left the windows open etc. Greg his younger brother, found the car in this sorry state and knew just where to tow it for an affordable restoration. Once again the familiar form graced the auto shop of Mount Douglas High School where John had got it mobile the first time.

Prior to leaving for Europe, John and 5 of his school friends came up

with the idea of expanding the interest in Citroëns by creating a

newsletter. One of his friends, Rupert Downing who owned a 1948 Traction Avant (Slough built but with left-hand drive made for the Canadian market), spearheaded the Newsletter idea.

To further advance the Citroën cause, Rupert and Tony Hubner (another

Cit fan) decided that a cross-country tour in a Citroën would surely show the car’s mettle. With as much attendant publicity as they could muster, they flew to Montreal where an allegedly sound 2CV was waiting for the trek to the west. Unfortunately the first leg of the journey to Kingston, was more than the car could bear. It split in half forming a wide V and leaving the pilot and copilot stranded. The cross country trek had come to a tragic end.

Fifteen years later, after John had moved to Toronto, he saw a Deux Chevaux for sale. The car (a 425cc engine version) was complete with spare parts of all description as part of the deal. When he saw the various bits and pieces, he saw that the extra doors and body parts were adorned with the logos from Rupert’s famous cross country trek from Montreal to Victoria! It is a small Citroën world.

In 1984, on a trip to Europe, John bought a Deux Chevaux. A few years later, Greg too bought a 2CV.

The idea for Escargot Motorcars arose from the fact that people would

notice the car and either through notes on the windshield or personal contact, wanted to find out how the cars could be acquired. John and Greg, who were both working full-time, started importing cars in ones and twos for the serious shoppers. Both felt that the cars would sell well if there were sufficient publicity for the car. To them, marketing was the key to the sale of these odd little charmers. Encouraged by George Dyke, who had just bought his first Citroën - a 2CV Charleston from Escargot -Greg left his  fancy MBA (John L’s words not mine...ed.) job in international banking and set up shop in a darkroom at the back of John’s business Quadravision, in Toronto. From there Greg contacted everyone who could bring favorable publicity to the car. These included all the automobile writers in both newspapers and magazines.

One of the more unusual sources of publicity came from Canadian Art a

magazine with a minuscule circulation who wished to portray the car as

an objet d’art.

The brothers Long also set up a booth at the International Auto Show

where they were swamped with interest and spent all day handing out brochures for their cars. Neither Greg nor John were certain how many cars were actually sold during the life of the company. Some cars were sold twice such as when someone bought a car, did not drive it and consequently sold it back to Greg who in turn resold it.

Though Escargot Motors has vanished, the cars they sold are still

around, bearing the little plate saying that the car was manufactured for so and so by Escargot Motorcars. They are still the pride and joy of their owners and importers.

Thank you John and Greg for all the memories.