CID

CID was the automobile marque of Constructions Industrielles Dijonaises—often misspelled Dijonnaises and incorrectly expanded as Compagnie—at Dijon, France. The organization succeeded or renamed the declining Cottereau concern around 1911–12; CID had appeared in earlier Cottereau advertising, leaving the exact legal form of the transition less clear than the product succession. Automobile manufacture under the CID badge is consistently placed in 1912–14 and ended with the outbreak of the First World War. Five model families are defensible. The smallest and apparently most successful was the tiny cyclecar-like two-seat Baby Cid, also called Emeraude, using a proprietary 8 hp single-cylinder Buchet engine. Several examples reportedly survive, including a museum car in the Salvador Claret collection at Sils, Spain. CID also pursued a technically original 12 HP four-cylinder. Its 2,120 cc engine had 75 mm bore and 120 mm stroke and eliminated conventional poppet valves through rotating sleeves. A surviving 1912 brochure shows that the system was CID/Cottereau's own and not covered by the better-known Knight licence. The 12 HP used a four-speed gearbox, 3,000 mm wheelbase, 1,320 mm track, 815 × 105 tires and weighed 780 kg. It cost 8,000 francs in France without tires. Contemporary reporting called it a single short sleeve-valve engine, and later historians suspect only a handful sold. Three further four-cylinder families were cataloged at 14, 16 and 22 hp. Accessible summaries establish their ratings but not their displacements, suppliers, valve systems, chassis dimensions, transmissions or bodies; they therefore remain distinct evidence-backed rows without invented specifications. The broad statement that CID used Buchet engines from 8 to 22 hp conflicts with the clear proprietary 12 HP construction and does not prove every larger four was Buchet-supplied. No complete body catalogue, annual allocation, competition record, chassis ledger, production totals, founders under the CID name or post-1914 successor survives publicly. CID is distinct from Cottereau while preserving its lineage, and unrelated to cubic-inch displacement abbreviations and later organizations named CID. Five rows account for the complete recoverable range.

Text adapted from “CID” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗