An SM, and an SM...

There is a photo somewhere of that combo on the salt flats/Bonneville. I'll try and find it...

Talking od SMs, i watched "Killer Elite" last night and the Jason Statham drives away at the end of the film in an SM. However earlier in the film he drives a coke bottle tina on RS 4 spokes and has a car chase with an XJ6, loads of retro motors, you have to wonder where they found them all

"Jerry Hathaway became a Citroën dealer by default. He was the suspension man in the service department of a Los Angeles Buick dealership when de dealer added Citroëns to the inventory. It took only one look at the Citroën V-6 engine and transaxle assembly for most of the dealer’s flat-rate mechanics to know they didn’t want to have anything to do with the car.

Not so with Jerry. He was already well past the point of being challenged or excited by front-end alignments and control-arm bushings: he wanted to learn something new, and the Citroën was it.

After a few years with various outfits that made part-time attempts at being Citroën dealers, Jerry ended up as the Southern California Citroën connection, cathering primarily to owners of the SM version, a sleek 4-passenger vehicle produces between 1971 and 1974.

One of Hathaway’s customers was hot-rodder and ex-Bonneville dry-lakers racer John McKibben, who kept talking about what a great shape the SM had for a Bonneville Land Speed Record car. The words sunk into Jerry, who had always wanted to be a drag racer bur never had the time to pursue it. He had a SM at his Van Nuys, California, shop that looked like it had been rear-ended by a freight train.It had been purchased originally to be cannibalizes for its parts. Instead , it ended up totally rebuild, from the steel monologue up.

Motor Trends’s Car of the Year in 1972, Hathaways’s SM race car is one of only 1.700 such vehicles delivered to the US from a total production of 13000 units. It retains the stock fully independent hydraulic suspension and 5 speed manual transmission. The engine is the original-equipment dual-overhead-cam aluminum Citroën/Maserati V-6 of stock displacement.

It is equipped with three 48 mm Weber carburetors and the usual hot-rod cams ans pistons an produces an estimated 250 horsepower from its 183 cubic inches (3.000) cc-enough power to pull the 3.127 pound front-wheel-drive Citroën to a speed nearly 154 mph at Bonneville’s 4.400-foot elevation.

But this is jerry’s first race car, so there will be no stopping at 150 mph. Already completed is an engine fitting with AiResearch turbochargers."

From here: www.infoweb.nl/smworld/salt.htm

Listen to the sound at the end..... /drool

you.tube/XDWkx-XNpHc

Allow me:



Edit: Thanks guys - now you've fixed the image link my post looks somewhat ridiculous

?? It's the same photo ??

I keep meaning to get a picture of my hero - he lives round the corner from Waterloo, and has an SM, two DSs (saloon and estate) and a BX, all parked on street and all generally full of paint, ladders etc ;D

There's one that's sat on the apron of a house in Loanhead in Mid-Lothian that's been there since I could drive. (24 years ago!!) I'm amazed it hasn't completely disolved yet.

As fortune would have it, I ended up sitting beside the owner on a flight from Gatwick a few years ago. I happened to be reading either PC or PPC and he expressed an interest.

Turns out he's got more than that one and the reason he's not done anything with it is that it was beyond saving when he bought it for spares.

Shame as I always dreamed of buying it and saving it but never had the money.