A video making the rounds shows a creator pulling back a barn door in Belgium to reveal a 1971 Citroen DS21 that hadn’t moved an inch since 2005. Covered in dust and surrounded by clutter, the car gets cleaned off, inspected, and eventually coaxed toward a start attempt, with the creator walking through every stage of waking up a vehicle that spent two decades sitting completely still.

The rescue comes from @automaster.dm, a creator who specializes in European barn finds, bringing long-dormant classics out of storage and documenting what it takes to get them running again.

@automaster.dm

The Citroen DS was one of the most technologically radical cars of its era when it debuted in 1955, and the DS21 shown in this video represents one of the model’s later, more powerful variants, produced as Citroen kept refining the platform through the 1960s and into the early 1970s before the DS line was finally replaced by the CX in 1975. Over roughly two decades of production, Citroen built well over a million DS models across all variants, but surviving examples, especially ones still wearing their original interior and engine as this barn find appears to, have become increasingly scarce as cars from that era have been scrapped, parted out, or lost to rust over the decades since.

What truly set the DS apart, and what makes a project like this one so technically involved, is its hydropneumatic suspension system. Instead of conventional steel springs, the DS used a sealed system of fluid-filled spheres and a central hydraulic pump to control ride height, suspension firmness, and even the car’s self-leveling and power steering, all from one interconnected system. That same hydraulic pressure also operated the brakes and, on many versions, the headlights’ self-leveling function, making the DS one of the most electronically and hydraulically integrated cars of its generation decades before that kind of system integration became common.

That same complexity is exactly why reviving a DS after two decades of dormancy is such a delicate job. The hydraulic fluid Citroen originally specified for these systems degrades and can turn corrosive over time if left sitting, attacking the rubber seals and internal components of the spheres and pump. Restorers working on long-dormant DS models routinely have to fully flush and rebuild the hydraulic system, replace the pressure spheres, and inspect every seal in the circuit before even attempting to bring the suspension back to life, work that specialist Citroen restoration shops frequently price well into the thousands of dollars once the pump, spheres, and seals all need attention rather than just one component.

Beyond the suspension, a car that’s sat untouched since 2005 carries all the usual dormancy risks: stale fuel that’s turned to varnish in the tank and lines, a fuel pump that’s likely seized, brake and clutch hydraulics that need to be fully drained and bled, and an engine that needs its oil checked and cylinders inspected before anyone tries to crank it over, to avoid damaging internals that have been sitting dry of fresh lubrication for years. Rushing that process on any classic, let alone one with the DS’s unusual hydraulic systems layered on top, is how a barn find revival turns into a far more expensive repair than it needed to be.

Given how specialized and labor intensive a proper DS21 revival is, this kind of video offers a rare, detailed look at a car most people only ever recognize from photos of its famously futuristic shape, not from watching someone actually try to wake one back up after twenty years of silence.