Let’s call it the CC Cohort Effect, or maybe even divine intervention: I was feeling a bit woozy and in need for an antidote to today’s two-ton double BigMacBroughams with extra crushed-velour sauce on the front page menu, so I headed to the Cohort for some Broughmo-Seltzer. Lo! There it was, sent to me straight from automotive heaven by the goddess herself: Her one and only begotten daughter, the Citroen SM. What propitious timing too; this is the first SM ever posted at the Cohort, and on the very day of our 1972 CCOTY Nominations. Not only is the SM the ultimate Anti-Brougham, but it even managed to win Motor Trend’s 1972 COTY. So much for the conspiracy theory of that award being based on a lucrative advertising budget from the winner.
It’s already 9:30 AM as I write this, so a proper gushing, tear-jerking, emo, full-on paean is not in the works just now; maybe another time, when I finally stumble into one on the streets of Eugene. But here’s one that fulfills requirements for an in-depth SM-ode pretty well. But let’s just say that the SM is one of the true wonders of the Automotive World, maybe even if that list were limited to to just seven.
In a nutshell: it was the fruit of a very unlikely hookup. In 1968, Citroen bought Maserati. What possible synergies might have been anticipated from the maker of eccentric long-wheelbase hydro-pneumatically suspended FWD cars that had very little sporting pretensions and the builder of classic RWD sports cars and coupe is anybody’s guess, but we can indulge Maserati dreams, right? Citroen certainly must have been.
But the unholy alliance did bear fruit, or fruity cars, depending on your POV. Citroen set itself to the task of building a world-class high performance coupe, based on the DS platform, but incorporating the DOHC 2.7L (later 3.0 L) alloy Maserati V6 from the mid-engine Merak. The SM’s hydraulically-assisted steering was an evolution of the DS’, and allowed superb feel at high speed, yet effortless turning in the parking lot. Ditto for the four-wheel disc brakes.
The SM’s supremely aerodynamic body (CD: 0.26) was designed in-house by Robert Opron, and facilitated effortless 120+ mph cruising for hours on end, and a top speed in excess of 140 mph, despite its modest 170-180 hp ratings.
This SM, shot in Stockholm and posted at the Cohort by DeeTwoAr, has the original six-headlight front end, whose beams are self-leveling, and also swiveled in corners with the steering. The US version had four regular round sealed bulbs, and lost their clear covers; ugh!
DeeTwoAr didn’t post any shot’s of the SM’s interior, so this one is from wikipedia. No velour loose-pillow seats, I’m sorry to say. But the SM’s height-adjusting and self-leveling ride would still have put any American Brougham to shame, regardless whether it was a pot-holed street in Manhattan or at 125 mph in the Nevada desert.
Citroen looked to the US as the primary export market for the SM, since the luxury coupe market was hot there. It was a bit of a tough sell, not surprisingly. Continental Mark IV buyers weren’t exactly cross-shopping an exotic Citroen. And given the SM’s complexity, degrees in mechanical, hydraulic and electrical engineering would be recommended prerequisites for ownership.
Only 12,920 SMs were built between 1970 and 1975. Citroen assumed it would get an exemption from the draconian 1974 US five-mph bumper regulations, which would have been impossible to meet, from the adjustable ride height alone. The feds turned the request down, and all the remaining 1974 US-bound SMs were shipped off to Japan.
In 1974, Citroen declared bankruptcy, and the SM was probably one of its many coffin nails. But what a brilliant way to go….
There you go, Paul. What a car!! Probably no more reliable than the aforementioned Torino, which was ghastly in my experience, but just so amazing!!
There was a four-door variant, or maybe just a show concept, called the Mediterranee. Any recollection there?
A gorgeous car, which anyone would want to own, just like we would want to be married to a supermodel.
Thanks, cohort. That was a treat.
It’s funny you can’t see a puddle under an old Citroen and NOT think it’s hydraulic fluid.
The SM is one of the most interesting cars of all time, right up there with the Tucker… in so many ways.
If you have any interest in these I would buy a good one now. Even if you don’t have much interest an SM would be a great investment imho. A Tucker sold for $2.6M this month at BJ.
Hydraulic fluid, me too…
And the SM has steerable headlights, just like the Tucker, so it’s basically the same thing…
Yup, first reaction of the 1st photo – LEAK! Still, with all the potential problems, this ranks high on my bucket list. I lusted after one of these back in high school, while my friends were wishing for Road Runners, Mustangs, and Chevelle SS396’s. They thought I was nuts then, I still like the thing now.
Actually, looking again at the first photo. I’ll take that beetle in the background!
Here you go, sir !
I am not sure I am man enough for this Child of the Goddess, but I like it from a distance. I will admit to having forgotten all about these, and that they were MT’s 1972 COTY. I suspect that this car was so far outside of my 13 year old northeastern Indiana experience that I just ignored it as some oddball French thing.
The C pillar and fastback window treatment reminds me of something else, but I am coming up blank as to what it is. This is the kind of car with complicated styling that I could just sit and gaze at for awhile to take it all in. I am not sure I make it a CCOTY, but it is certainly a fascinating car.
Maybe this?
!! I’d never noticed that similarity before and it’s quite remarkable now. Perhaps Datsun took inspiration from the SM – although the Cherry’s style is also a natural progression from the previous (and pre-SM) 70 Cherry. Regardless, I’m going to see the similarity forever now!
Definitely no other candidate could compare with a SM nothing else in the world could offer the features ride confort or roadholding. Its got my Vote
Simply stunning. Even in brown. A no-contest CCOTY n’est pas?
agreed.
Totally agreed. This, as a failure is still a hell of a lot more impressive than all those ugly fat broughams, no matter what their sales figures.
I can’t decide if that thing is hideous or awesome.
Definately interesting.
Only saw one on the street once ,anyone remember Burt Reynolds driving one into a lake? Can’t remember the film sorry
That would be “The longest yard”. Far worse, the car chase scene also shows a ’67 Plymouth GTX being wrecked.
Glad you’ve found the photos interesting enough to create an article, Paul !
Uploading them to Flickr, somehow I just knew it will happen )
Me ?.. as impressive as the SM is, I’d rather something… a little more Big Mac, a little more Brougham, and much, much less French. A 1972 Dart 2dr HT with vinyl covered roof, maybe ?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fodenalpha/7812045860/in/pool-curbsideclassic
Maybe I’ve just too often thought of the SM as of the precursor to my neighbour’s red Kamm-tailed, steam iron-shaped C4 coupe I’ve seen being towed by a truck to the repair shop all too often…
http://katalogavto.com/uploads/taginator/May-2012/c4-coupe-vtr.jpg
And yes, calibrick, thoughts on the nature of the puddle beneath the car do visite my mind each time I look at this photo, too )
I understand. The grass is always greener on the other side of the ocean. And the Dart would certainly be easier to keep on the road. But every once in a while, we have to indulge our imaginations, eh?
Anyway, excellent timing.
I was just thinking about my brother’s 72 Dart before I read your post. 2 door coupe, orange(ish) with a white vinyl top, 318, torqueflite(?) auto. I was just coming of driver age when he had it, new. It was a good car.
I’ve only seen one of these in my life at the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville and it is marvelous beyond words in person. They also have a 2CV and Traction Avant and all sorts of wonderful odd automobiles.
Jay Leno thinks that this one of the greatest cars ever made. I would have to agree. But it would take so much effort to keep it running. I get tired just thinking about it.
CCOTY? This is a candidate for CCOTDecade, and maybe even CCOTCentury. (OK, so it won’t WIN CCOTC, but it’s a decent runner-up.)
I still think think they are absolutely beautiful! Just amazing cars.
There was one on BAT “Bring A Trailer”……and even people who owned them (ESPECIALLY people who owned them!) warned of their complexity and expense. Too bad there wasn’t a Torino underneath!
This is one of those cars I do not want to own but I sure enjoy reading about. I saw one on an old episode of “Columbo” a while back. Great car!
At a recent car show, I saw an SM that someone had converted to an El Camino-style ute. (Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of it.) With a DS/ID, that wouldn’t have seemed quite as odd — CitroĂ«n did sell a lot of wagons, and the El Camino/Ranchero were basically station wagon conversions — but doing it with an SM strikes me as amusingly perverse.
Sounds like Jerry Hathaway’s SM tow vehicle he uses to tow the Bonneville SM. His is the only one that I know of, he’s probably the best known SM guru in the US.
.
That would be the one…
Wow, that has got to be the world’s best-looking ute!
If you want some perversion, may I recommend the Tissier plateau, which is a ten wheeler ? You can see and learn (in french) about it here: http://www.sm2a-automobiles.com/realisations-en-cours/sm-plateau-tissier.html
More oddities based on the SM to be seen here: http://citroensmpassion.free.fr/ch3/organigra.htm (go to “LES SERIES SPECIALES” on the left menu), my favourite one being the SM Michelin (285km/h/177 mph – 340hp).
Have a good day
This car is like a boat, not in its manners mind you, but in its concept of ownership, like a boat, you like the idea of owning an SM, tooling around in your sport coat and turttleneck and yellow tinted sunglasses, like Dr. Heywood Floyd on the way to the moon, honking the strange sounding french horn at the mini skirted girls as you drive by, but the reality is that this you will find yourself rooting for the Nazis in movies, you will end up in ruin cursing the day it ever arrived to darken your domain.
Still, I kinda want one.
Thank you for that wonderful series of justifications for owning one.
Rooting for Nazis in movies? Rather extreme, I’d say. Never felt that way and I do like SMs. I am rather fond of leggy chickie babes in mini skirts.
I saw an SM at Cars and Coffee in Irvine, California a couple of years ago. A fascinating technical achievement, but I imagine it’s a nightmare to own.
I have always thought they were beautiful, but I didn’t realize how low they are, especially compared to the V50 next to it. The V50 isn’t exactly huge either. I’d have a hard time choosing between the V50 and the SM. Actually can I have both?
Wow,what a vehicle…certainly beautiful to look at, but I don’t think I’d want to own one. In 1971 I was in the air Force and I worked with some civilian employees. I had a copy of “Car & Driver” that had a road test of a SM. One of the ladies I worked with(who drove a Valiant)took one look at it and called it “ugly”. I was rather shocked when “motor Toones” chose it fore their ’72 COTY; I can only surmise they were tired of all the criticism about the award being about advertising revenue and chose something that few people had ever seen. Citroen didn’t exactly have a large presence in the United States-in my lifetime I have seen exactly 2 Citroens.
Seriously, I wonder how many of these vehicles were sold in the U.S?
I wonder if the SM played a role in the design of the Ford Taurus? I can see some influence from the SM, at least in the front and the aerodynamic shape.
Whatever else one may say about it, the SM was quite the technological showcase. A lot of its major features had previously appeared on the DS, of course, but 17 years after launch, the DS itself still had few serious rivals in terms of technical sophistication — mainly the M100-powered Mercedes 300SEL 6.3 and 600.
That’s one weird car!
Sadly, my nomination for 1972 has to be the 1972 Chevelle and Impala 2 door hardtops.
Why? Can you spell “Colonnade”?
The Impala? Well, for some reason, I was taken by them – the last full-size Chevy I liked until the 1977 model. I’d never own one, though.
I’d take a Chevelle anyday. Make mine a “Heavy Chevy”!
nwflvr,
I always thought the 1st Gen Sable was inspired by the SM. It really is a bit of S&M too!
I parked one regularly at the Jonathan Club in the early 80s. WEIRD steering!
I had a friend who owned one of these, back in the days. His SM was beautiful indeed. But had a terrible reputation for breaking down. He was rich and this was his daily driver and it often left him stranded only on his way home at night he said.
Found out later it did not break down all that often, but did give him a good excuse to visit his girlfriend. His previous car was a Jag. And his wife was slowly realizing what was going on.
I guess if he had really wanted to save his marriage he would have let his wife buy him a Ford or Chevy for the commute. I do think it was one of the few times Consumers Report was used as evidence in a divorce court.
Maybe it’s just the wheel-skirts, but it reminds me of one car from this side of the pond.
That’s what I was thinking of.
I suspect more in terms of general aerodynamic principles than any specific stylistic legacy, though. The Kamm-tailed first-generation Honda Insight has similar echoes.
I would give the SM the 72 nod just because someone produced it. What a car. Given the times and the circumstances of it’s birth, how could it not be flawed. If there is a heaven, everyone will be driving perfectly functioning Citroen SMs.
Interesting that the SM has such an effective aero shape, despite the relatively upright windshield. I can’t name any new cars matching that angle, except the Mini and the Beetle. Still, we get nothing but laid-back windshields that impede visibility and soak up heat, because they look “fast” or “efficient,” take your pick. It just goes to show how rear end shapes have even more influence on aero drag than front ends. Air compresses relatively easily, but efficiency drops fast once you start dragging partial vacuums behind the rear end.
I had a model of this car…my old man did a year assigned to Paris and brought back some souvenirs.
I’m sure they were spectacular cars. The French…had tremendous ideas not backed by their engineering departments.
Elsewhere we’ve discussed the XJ Jeeps…born in the minds of AMC’s French rescuers, built with AMC’s off-the-shelf parts. Tremendous successes.
And the Alliance, an adaptation of the Renault 9/11, done with FRENCH parts and engineering…hit the markets like the Titanic hit the iceberg.
Coincidence? When Toyota, with its dull and boring AND RELIABLE cars, was cracking the American market WIDE open…no, I think not. Such cars as the Renault did not do well in America…for a reason.
I always imagined someone would run into the engineering dept at Citroen and yell “I HAVE LE REALLY BAD IDEA!!!” and everyone would just go with that…..
In 1973, my first apartment in Atlanta, was right behind the Citroen dealer, in the Buckhead area. I was already a car guy, having worked for awhile at a foreign car garage. I used to walk over and check these cars out on the showroom, which consisted of 2-3 cars total, and a 1 bay service area. Beautiful cars.
Given that this was Citroen, there should have been one service bay for every car on display…
That thing is just gorgeous to look at, but I don’t know if I would want to own and operate it here in the US. This coming from a guy who would own another Yugo if I could find one with a 1.5L motor swapped in… I know, I know…
40 years on, even the interior looks remarkably contemporary today. The whole car is so airy and light, but low and probably disappears below the sightlines of your average present-day Camaro, not to mention every soccer mom’s Odyssey or Suburban.
Just a quick comment: they’re not as low as this one looks–at least not while driving. This one is “resting” with the suspension deflated. When they’re turned on, the suspension repressurizes and raises the car to a normal(ish) level. Probably a bit taller than a Camaro.
When I was a kid, there were a few friends/family with Citroens, and you could never just get in and go… you always had to wait a bit (not long, maybe 10 seconds if memory serves) for the car to rise. They were “ordinary” Citroens–GS and BX–but what I wouldn’t give to have either one here in Boston today….
They heard that Americans really liked cars with ‘get up and go’ – so they built one…
As I’ve mentioned here before, I saw one of these in a parking lot (at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds, oddly) when I was about six, and I’ve wanted one ever since. Although now that I’m an adult, a Subaru SVX is probably as far as I’ll go in terms of a weird coupe with supposed maintenance headaches.
A truly strange and beautiful car; we’ll probably never see anything quite like it again.
I don’t know if you can call it the “ultimate brougham antidote”. I think it’s more of brougham, French (or more generally, European) style. I think that for the “ultimate brougham antidote”, something dead simple and ultilitarian like the 2CV is more like it.
I was lucky enough to have one of these as a company car, back in the day. As a sports car guy, at first I was revolted by its handling in the city. A quick blast through the back roads of New Mexico and Colorado taught me how deceptive it was. I would myself whipping around corners at speeds I would not take my tricked out 240Z …
A solid car at speed and quiet at 100mph … and the variable height suspension allowed me to go “off-road” whenever I wanted, at one point, chasing a herd of antelope across the San Luis Valley of Colorado on a moon-filled night.
It never gave me any trouble with all the miles I piled on it …and was a great conversation starter with the chicks … they seemed to really get off on how the suspension slowly rose, like a camel slowly rising to full height before taking off like a bat out of hell.
Still is one of my favorite cars …
>>I was lucky enough to have one of these as a company car, back in the day.<<
OK, I have to ask…what company?!
Yes I have to 2nd that question. what company?
Willy Wonka?
I’m thinking maybe a French company. Did Elf Aquitaine have a presence in Colorado/New Mexico in the early ’70s? 🙂
I’ve met two of these cars. The first was over 30 years ago when I was a parts-runner/car-jockey/gofer for an Alfa Romeo dealership, and a gold SM — with the five-speed in the gated shifter! — sat on our lot for a couple of years. I forget its origins, but it was either a trade-in or a former customer’s car that the dealership had somehow acquired (siezed when the owner couldn’t pay the repair bill, maybe?). I was very attached to my 240Z at the time, but I did give some contemplation to getting my mitts on a Maserati-powered Citroen. Not sure what these cars fetch these days, but at the time the vehicle was only about six or seven years old, and my boss was willing to let me have it for $5000. But of course the potential repair nightmares scared me off… just like they did with everybody else. (I’ve always suspected SM stood for Sado-Masochism, i.e. the Sadists were the designers who created a damnably complicated and unreliable vehicle; while the Masochists were, of course, the people who bought them.)
My other “SM experience” was around 2005, at a gas station in Hollywood, as my mechanic was trying to get my old Cressida to cheat death for another week. A pampered SM, also gold, slithered onto the lot, driven by a very tall middle-aged man who looked a little like the very tall Tim Robbins (but wasn’t). We had a brief conversation about his car: IIRC he said it was a later model, privately imported, after Citroen pulled (or was forced) out of the US market. In fact, it might even have been the same car in the photo Mike G posted.
Attached: Spectacular on the inside too, the SM’s interior looks like high-end Danish Modern living-room furniture. I have no complaints about the (standard feature or optional extra?) jeune fille, either.
Certainly one of the prettiest looking cars ever, in my opinion. The interior is just as wonderful as the exterior. We never officially got them new, but some did arrive here new as private imports; and there have been more ex-Japan and ex-USA since. The good ones are NZ$30K+; even the ones needing work are comparatively expensive starting at around NZ$9k. Sooooo tempting – a sure-fire recipe for personal bankruptcy, but what a gorgeous way to go!
As an aside, the one pictured below was for sale last week for NZ$32K; it was imported here from the USA in the late 70s. What makes it stand out is it’s got the US-spec headlights, but with the Euro-spec covers. An interesting combination that does a lot to lessen the uglification of the round lights. Note the ’74 Euro SM next to it, with Euro lights and a combination park-light/indicator in the bumper.