One of the wildest production cars ever made meets an unexpected fate.
During the past 15-plus years of documenting automotive history as found in car graveyards, I’ve run across a fair number of discarded French machines. Renaults and Peugeots, of course, and even a couple Citroëns. The French car I never expected to see in such a place is the legendary Citroën SM, but that all changed when I walked the rows of a self-service yard near Sacramento, California, last week. Yes, a genuine SM, battered and scorched but still recognizable, among the nondescript Altimas and Jettas of the Imports section.
It appears an electrical fire started under the dash and then spread to the engine compartment, at which point the firefighters tore up the front body putting out the blaze. While SMs in nice condition are worth good money these days, the cost of restoring a burned example would be prohibitive.
The fire didn’t get much to the rear of the dash, so the interior still has plenty of good stuff for Northern California Citroën aficionados (of which there are many).
The SM was available in the United States for just the 1971 through 1973 model years, after which it proved unable to meet federal bumper and headlight-height specifications (it remained on sale elsewhere through 1975, at which point it got the axe when Peugeot took over Citroën). The list price for the ’73 SM with automatic transmission was $12,940, or about $90,520 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars. In 1973, a new Mercedes-Benz 450 SL would cost you $11,688 ($81,765 now) and a V12-powered Jaguar XKE convertible went for a mere $8075 ($56,490 today).
The automatic transmission was an uninteresting Borg-Warner three-speed, but check out that stylish shift indicator!
Like its predecessor, the DS (which could still be bought new by Americans in 1973 for as little as $4665 [$32,635]), the SM had a comfy-riding hydropneumatic suspension and futuristic gadgetry galore. It wasn’t easy to keep everything working on an SM, but so what?
Rough-but-fixable SMs are out there at low (enough) prices, and the Three Pedal Mafia 24 Hours of Lemons team managed to race this one (pictured above) on the East Coast a few years back. It was such a punitive car to get in quasi-raceworthy shape that they opted for an S&M theme, complete with ball gag on the hood. By that time, 3PM had already raced a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, so they knew a thing or two about such challenges.
In addition to being a ridiculously comfortable and 22nd-century-looking luxury car, the SM was fast. A Maserati 2.7-liter V6 with triple Weber carburetors sent 180 hp to the front wheels, enabling the car to cruise all day at 120 mph and hit a top speed close to 140 mph. Citroën bought Maserati in 1968 and instantly commanded that this engine be designed for the planned SM.
So, if you’re a member of the Citroën Car Club, as at least one owner of this car was, get yourself to Rancho Cordova and rescue all the useful parts off this car!
We can’t discuss the SM without including the most famous movie car chase scene involving this fine French police-evading machine. Burt is driving a five-speed car here, unlike the automatic Trans Am he wheeled on celluloid a few years later.
Keyword: Rare 1973 Citroën SM Is Junkyard Treasure