Four Finnish Friday ladies against alcohol abuse

Thank you for your clarifications Antti!

So, not so much “S. A. D. Students Against Drunk Driving “, but more an homage to their Grandparents lives and times?

In addition to my previous comment, these abiturients or ylioppilaat wear very strange hats, like a part of some costume. Finnish student hats are white caps with black visors. All in all very joyful traditions that deserve to be explained. Oh, and the Finnish Kieltolaki law was in force between 1919 to 1932, where after we have had the punishment of state owned alcohol monopoly that was until 1980s notoriously strict for its customers.


I actually found recently several B1 and B2 bodies stored in the countryside in a shed of a well known elder mobilisti and plan to purchase them inorder to build them on Fiat 501 and 507 chassis.

In Finland, these abiturients, commonly known as Abis are high school students that have written their final exams in february and then celebrate around the city streets. This day is called penkkarit, originally penkinpainajaiset, which is a very old name meaning something about pushing the desk chairs or benches against the school desks. The Finnish mobilist movement began in the 1950s when young lads from certain high schools in Helsinki began to search and save prewar cars from the scrapyards, storing many rare vintage cars to a cowhouse which latwr became the first real car museum in our country. Back then these bangers where ofcourse driven in student celebrations such as first of May and with the abis. Nowadays it is more common that the abis rent some old, often vintage truck for their class and then all the trucks of digferent high schools tour the city centres with the students dressed in all kinds of costumes, shouting jokes while partying at the truck bed and throwing candy to pedestrians at the street corners.

On the next day, the abis are gone and the second year students become the oldest in school, so they traditionally dress them in prewar style clothing and arrive in style to school with some old car if possible. Now this has changed lately to an dull american pram with bright coloured plastic dresses and practised dances at the school gym in front of an audience of relatives, but when this picture was taken in the fifties, the Vanhat i.e old ones would mimic their grandparents generation through the scool day and then keep a very fine dance party at the evening at some local hall. This would be called Vanhojen tanssit or the Dances of the Elderly.

And yes, it is surely a Citroen, very common in Finland back then after Ford, Chevrolet and Fiat, but only a few survived.

Citroën bien sur puisque on aperçoit le logo derrière la pancarte
et type A qui n'ont jamais été Kégresse. Le montage Kégresse a commencé avec la suivante, la B2.

This is definitely a Citroen.
Judging by the flicked-up rear mudguard, distorted doors, poor shut lines and squared-off bottoms to the doors, it is probably a Type A which had a wooden-framed body.

There are too many bonnet louvres for a 1921 Type A, I suggest it is a 1923 B2. The wings are not of a 1921 Type A which have a slight rib.