24 Nov 05
The DS-series saloon, which made its debut in 1955, is rightly considered one of the most stunning cars of all time. There can't be many vehicles which have been praised by philosophers, but the DS was the subject of an essay by Roland Barthes, in which he described it as marking "a change in the mythology of cars" from mere symbols of brutal power to an objectified spiritualism.
Still, there's little to be said about the DS that hasn't been said already and, for all its otherworldliness and technical innovations, it actually became a reasonably accessible product. Less of a luxury car than a mainstream large family model, it was positioned in the market roughly where the C5 range is today. The lower-spec ID-series models, the huge Safari estates and numerous commercial variants were all practically oriented; even the most luxurious DS Pallas, with its swivelling headlamps, was never offered with a six-cylinder engine.
The most rarefied Citroen of the 60s and 70s, then, was a two-door coupe: the Maserati-engined SM. Citroen had purchased the troubled Italian firm in 1968 and quickly put its new subsidiary to work to develop a luxury GT.
"What was foreseen", wrote LJK Setright, "was a new, dramatic high-performance, high-class Citroen to fill a gap which had become distressingly obvious since the decline of the upper-crust French firms [Delage, Delahaye and so on] a decade earlier."
Maserati's 4.1-litre Indy V8 was reduced by two cylinders to give 2,670cc in V6 format - a measure to gain exemption from France's most punitive taxation of high-powered cars - and the DS platform modified to take an all-new five-speed gearbox, a super-sensitive steering system and an updated version of the hydropneumatic suspension. Designed by in-house stylist Robert Opron as a clear descendent of the DS, it was nonetheless an image of the future 70s, rather than the 60s.
The SM was developed in just 18 months, launched at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show and sales started later that summer. However, it had come at the wrong time: while it had been developed with the US market very much in mind, the energy crisis put paid to any demand for a 16mpg super-coupe and buyers both sides of the Atlantic were frightened of its complexity, even before fuel economy became an issue.
