Re: Citroen talk (was:Re: OK, So What Do You Do?)

Here is the full e-mail, uncensored in China! Surely the Chinese can't
be censoring me because they intend to compete in the old Maserati
market... Must be some mistake. Why, I am an icon in Chinese
schoolrooms, about 75k students (who will be opinion-formers in just a
few years) in just one subject every morning wishing the writer of
their textbook good health and a long life. -- AJ

****

Sander DeWaal <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Andre Jute" <fiultra@xxxxxxxxx> said:


....to stop for fuel almost twice every hour), and only half an hour behind
my beloved Citroen SM (the one with the Maserati engine, a major
transcontinental tourer in its time).


Ah, the famous V6, a V8 where they essentially chopped off 2 cylinders
to make it fit within the space available.

I had straight 6 cylinder 3500 which I kept in Cape Town when I was
young man and later as I could afford them various sizes of the V8
Maserati too. The straight six was a sweet car but not very powerful
for its size by modern standards. The V8 models were superior to any
contemporary Ferrari, which is why people with higher expectations
bought them. Another (real) Maserati I kept for a while, the Khamsin,
also used Citroen brakes, and I have a vague memory of Citroen bits in
a Kyalami, which was really a jumped-up badge-engineered De Tomaso
Deauville, but a lovely car for all of that, and despite the pimptastic
fake suede upholstery. The real Maserati engines were all absolutely
bulletproof (of course except for the little midengined Maserati Merak
(?)which got the same chopped-down "Citroen abomination").

Rumours were, one had to plan his trips inbetween Citroen dealers to
have the distribution chain and -rollers replaced ;-)

In English, "timing chain". It had no tension-adjustment whatsoever in
the cut-down version. Very poor design. If it was not perfectly
serviced, its "service life" could easily get down to 10k miles, and if
it wasn't attended to the moment it started going wrong, the engine
went with it -- which is why I so rudely corrected your English, to be
sure everyone would understand!

I used to drive from Cambridge to Duxford where there was a Citroen
dealer who knew his business, spend the day gliding or inspecting the
planes in the museum there, then drive down to London the next day to a
Maserati specialist, who serviced the SM while I visited my agent and
publishers or toured the art galleries. Two days a month, say; you need
to be committed to a car like that.

When we lived in the Forest of Devres where I was hiding out from
assassins the South African government sent after me for a couple of my
books, any time I had to make a long journey for business my SM
specialist would impound (he said "confiscate") my SM and lend me his
batwing 635, which every time three drops of rain fell was like driving
a bar of soap on a mirror. But actually, the few long journeys we did
do in the SM came off faultlessly; I don't want to pretend it was a 911
that you could treat like VW Beetle, but the SM wasn't actually
fragile, like say a contemporary Ferrari.

And yet, had that engine been more reliable, this car would have been
one of the milestones of the era, despite the energy crisis.

It was one of the milestones, all the same. I cannot think of another
car that went that well, that gave so much for so little, except the
DS. In the SM, when the engine was not abused, it worked very well; it
was a very good milegobbler, it's 165-180bhp (depending on model)
working well with the aerodynamics to give a very relaxed cruise with
averages approaching 200kph possible on the long roads through the
night when the only other vehicles were the TIR pros cruising around
150kph, fast to spot you in their mirrors and fast to give way.

The reason I mentioned the Jensen Interceptor is its big engine. From
7.2 litres it had the same top speed as a 3 litre SM, about 135mph, but
that enormous torque made passing painless at even very high speeds in
tight confines, which made it an even more relaxing car when crossing
several borders in a day. The SM wasn't only screwed by the miserable
space they left for the engine, which caused the cutting down and
attendant evils, it was screwed by the miserable French tax laws, which
penalize cars over 2.7 litres brutally. It coulda been the greatest car
ever but it was crippled before birth. Even so, as I say, the only
other contender for a car that stunningly *Bauhaus* -- everything fit
for the purpose and nothing that is not -- is the DS from the same
stable; in many ways the DS is a far more beautiful car, in essence
timeless while the styling of the SM is a matter of taste and much more
bound to its period.

I know of some people who put a DS23 engine with electronic injection
in their SM, and were happy with it for a long time.

Sure thing. The Maserati engine wasn't very powerful and on give and
take roads needed to be worked hard which was against the spirit of the
car; it came into its own on the grand tour with constant high speeds
on top gear. I wouldn't be surprised to discover the DS23EFI engine had
a more beneficial torque curve than the Maserati V6.

The SM really wasn't a car suitable for the British, who are given to
buzzy little motors for beating up the lanes; the SM was four inches
longer in the wheelbase and a full foot longer overall than our Volvo
Estate of which I wrote yesterday. You don't beat up lanes in a car 16
feet long...

There is a project going on here in the Netherlands to cram a CX 2.5
Turbo II engine into a SM, a dirty task because everything needs to be
reversed (originally, the gear box lies *in front* of the engine in a
SM, just like in the DS).

The engine space is 16in long. Very little will fit in there. I thought
about the V4 Ford of Germany made for several years, often retrofitted
in NSU Ro80 which had similar space problems to the SM. (The NSU R080
was another advanced car that fell by the wayside.)

There was a fellow in France who simply manufactured his own engine to
fit the SM. It was, wait for it, a turbocharged diesel engine, which he
also used in some other racing cars. This was said to be a very
thorough, competent, fast conversion; I never actually saw one. Ten,
fifteen years ago I had a dealer in France look for one for me but all
he was offered had been allowed to rust *through* some panels and that
was that. I was later told the diesel genius converted fewer than 10
SM, mainly because of the difficulty of finding enough with a good body
and chassis. There are no body spares; the spares were crushed with the
last several hundred complete bodies.

I'll see if I can find the site where they report about the progress
on this project, if anyone is interested.

Please. Let us know.

Today, I think you would have to be obsessed to run an SM for everyday
use, as I did in the years immediately after manufacture ceased. But if
I could have one new, I might be tempted to take up motoring again...

Meanwhile, sometimes I dream the more realistic dream of someone
calling me: "We just pulled the dustsheets off a brand new DS23EFI
Pallas, black with tan leather and the five speed overdrive floorshift,
that a dealer forgot he had. You have first offer." This is not an
impossible dream: in the 1960s a brand-new Bugatti Type 57 was
discovered at a dealer not even in the back countryside of France
(where they still think Napoleon is Emperor) but in bustling
Marseilles.

****
Of the cars I thrashed and trashed, there are quite few I would not
have again: a BMW Isetta with a V12 Jaguar engine out the back on rails
was probably excessive, a Mini-Cooper was too noisy to make up for its
pleasures, Austin Healey 3000 were crude agricultural implements, MG TC
and TD and MGA TwinCam were gutless wonders.

I really can't say why, but every Citroen I ever had, including the
salesrep-special GS flat-four which would spew up its oil over the
windscreen after precisely three hours and forty minutes at 92mph (flat
chat, no reserve, the engine size was only about 1 litre) on the
motorway, lives fondly in my memory. The only other makes that comes
even close in my memory, for service and pleasure, are Porsche and
Bentley (1).

Andre Jute
What can I say? I just like fine machinery.

(1) This isn't an unfair comparison at all. A *new* SM in its day was
around the price of a Jensen Interceptor or a Vantage Aston, probably
more than a Rolls, well above Ferrari prices. People paid because even
then everyone knew that it was the car of the century. But I bought my
SM used after production ended; the price fell precipitously after they
were two years old, regardless of mileage, so that pricewise used SM
back then competed with new 911, though of course the maintenance cost
would be much, much higher, as anyone who wasn't an idiot could guess
by just looking into the wheelwells and under the bonnet of the SM.

.

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