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I haven't driven many SM's. They really are the ultimate DS. It's a shame they always tried to sqeeze in under the engine capacities for taxation in france. Citroen owned maserati at the time. Rather than fitting there existing quad cam quad carby V8, they lopped of 2 cylinders creating a quad cam triple carby V6 (that's also used in the merak). I've worked on a Maseratie Khansim in the past too... The maserati and citroen cars from that era have a bizarre combination of parts. Eg: the Khasnim has a modified version of the Citroen SM diravi steering, high pressure hydraulic citroen brakes. and uses the citroen hydraulics to adjust the front seats and lift/lower the headlights. Very bizarre.
It's a shame an SM is so far out of my price range. Strangely we have a business in australia dedicated to importing and doing high quality restorations on SM's
Citroen SM Australia
Dunno how he keeps afloat given there basically an unknown car.
For those who don't know Citroens, imagine a 2 door coupe, citroen hydraulic suspension (yes it goes up and down and self levels),
=center point steering (you can completely loose a front wheel and the car won't veer)
=rear track is much narrower than the front for high speed stability.
=The steering work on the same principle as a light aircraft. There is no direct connection between the steering wheel and front wheel when it's pressurised. It's only 2turns lock to lock and aggressively centers itself at speed. Yet is finger tip light at parking speeds.
=That big bank of 6 headlights, the inner four turn with the steering wheel, the outer two (low beam) self level as they are hooked back to the anti-roll bars.
=the high pressure brakes, all your doing is opening a valve to allow high pressure hydraulics to flow into the braking system. There's no brake pedal, it's just a rubber "blob" on the floor that looks like an overgrown dimmer switch.
I'd have one tomorrow if I had the $$$ to fund it's purchase.
What killed these off was Citroen built these and the Citroen GS Birotor at the same time.
Citro?n GS Birotor 1
This bankrupted them (yet again) and the cars hit the market at the same time as the fuel shortage hit in the 70's .... killing them off in record time. Infact the factory tried to buy back all the rotaries to crush them so they wouldn't have to supply parts for them in the future.
seeya
Shane L.
Originally Posted by V8Ian
Keeping it simple is complicated.
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