1971 Citroën SM

This example was apparently sold new to a M. Jean-Jacques May, who lived in a small town down the coast from Cannes. He obviously cared for it, but when he died in 2017, it was bought by a Portuguese gentleman. Once in Portugal, it received some recommissioning work, having been off the road for some time, before changing hands. It was bought soon after by our vendor Bob, who part-exchanged another Citroën – a Mehari – and shipped the car to the UK.

When the original owner’s widow sold the car, she was unable to find where her husband had stored the written history, so there is little bar the car’s old French registration document. The car had covered just over 50,000km when Bob bought it and he’s only added a few thousand to that.

In short, the car is either incredibly original and well-preserved or has received some exceptionally sensitive restoration work…it’s very difficult to be sure which it is. We hope to be able to clarify this in due course but in the meantime, the car’s condition – inside and out – stands up to the closest inspection.

The Ivory White paint is surely too perfect to be the coat that was applied in 1971, but there are none of the usual signs of a rapid respray. It’s the almost food-hygeine standards of cleanliness that grab you. Look at the door shuts and hinge panels; look at the underside of the bonnet, which should really be hidden by a layer of insulation.

You can spend a long time peering down the flanks of an SM for your own enjoyment, but if doing so to check panel fit and door dings you’ll find only good news here. As for rust, you’ll find no tell-tale bubbles or splits anywhere. The chromed mouldings are in excellent nick and the bright wheeltrims are pretty much unmarked. The wheels wear four Uniroyal Rain Max tyres in 195/70r 15 and there is plenty of tread all round. The spare looks a good deal older, but again with lots of tread.

The glass looks to be original; the screen is lightly marked with age but not to the extent that it would cause you any problems. What else? Well, the lamp lenses are fine and the headlamps turn with the steering as they should, though the silvering on one or two bowls is letting go. And that’s about it. It’s beautiful.

Here again we’re faced with the conundrum…original or very skilful re-trim? Normally, 45 years in the Provencal sun would bake an SM’s fabric interior like this to fragments, but if the car has been garaged, these ribbed cloth bucket seats could indeed have survived intact. The oh-so-70s fabric is often sagging and threadbare too, but not here, the seats genuinely look like new. The under-carpets certainly seem to be the original ones; you can see the sun-fade when compared with the edged overmats. Perhaps only the mats are new, but then again, the ones in the driver’s footwell seem to be genuine Citroën. The seatbelts look original, too. Maybe this SM can actually live up to its looks and travel through time?

Neither front nor rear (especially rear) seats look like they’ve seen any use. The headlining is equally spotless, and there’s no sunroof to let British weather in past the seals. The dash and centre console are delightful, with no blemishes to spoil the gold-effect panels or the oval dials, which closely resemble the kind of watch worn by the most fashionable fellas of 1971. The door cards are as perfectly ribbed and textured as they ever were, and while the radio aerial erects itself on command, the driver’s window is sticky. The a/c works, though. It’s like Barbarella’s cocktail lounge and it’s a treat to be in here.

There’s a fair amount of underseal and perhaps cavity wax on the car’s hull, but no traces of corrosion any more significant than a surface bloom, and then only on the odd spot where something’s chipped the underseal. The exhaust – two pipes into the central silencer, four pipes out – appears to be painted in a protective coating. There is some surface corrosion on some of the hydropneumatic gear and one trailing arm plus the tiniest hint of rust staining at the lower lip of the rear wings, behind the rear wheels. The bars of that vulnerable grille over the ‘mouth’ under the bumper, are undamaged.

In the boot is a clean carpet-type liner, spare wheel with cover and some belts and bulbs. Under the bonnet, the engine bay presents as that of a well-pampered original car, not of a restored show car. It’s smart but it doesn’t strike you as the something that was disassembled and removed for a recent repaint. Another hint to the car’s survivor status?

It doesn’t leave drips of oil on the ground and it starts (without smoke), pulls (again, without smoke) and stops very nicely. It has a lovely ‘feel’; a difficult thing to communicate, but something that suggests a genuinely smashing example of the type.

Bob has just been in touch with the Portuguese previous owner at our request with the hope of clarifying this car's very smart condition. The result is that there are no further invoices to add, but that the following works are reported in the recommission in Portugal:

• Hydraulics overhauled,
• A/C was checked over
• Passenger door and bonnet only two areas resprayed
• Refurbished wheels
• New tyres
• Carbs overhauled
• Electric windows mechanisms re worked with new metal gears
• Rev counter repaired 
• Exhaust replaced

In addition we have a few old sheets from the car’s sale in France, plus an extensive bill from a Citroën-trained mechanic to whom Bob brought the car after it arrived in the UK. It details a lot of the kind of service items you might want to replace on a stored car – belts, spark plugs, plug leads, cables, dust covers, a battery, some switches and wiring repairs. There is also an owner’s wallet and handbook, which is probably a whole more useful for an SM than for more ordinary cars, especially for baffled first-time SM users.

We know some of you would like to ask about SM specific updates: as with all our auctions, we publish absolutely every bit of information we have, and that is no more true than this listing. we don't have any more!

What a fabulous machine. And what an intriguing story…if it’s as unmolested as it seems, you’d struggle to find another SM that’s survived the decades with so little interference. It drives like a good one should drive (Bob’s driven it a couple of thousand km’s to prove that), there are no corrosion worries and the interior is show-standard. It would move you across Europe with all of the pace and grace that took road-testers’ breath away when the car was launched 50 years ago.

It that sense, it’s a little depressing. Like Hoverspeed Ferries or Concorde, Citroën SMs belong to an era that was making travel faster, smoother and more exciting. Speed limits were rarely enforced, especially on France’s new autoroutes, and cars like this made you wonder what marvels the industry would produce next. The answers have been a bit disappointing, haven’t they?

But while private ownership of a Concorde or a cross-channel Hovercraft is pretty tricky, owning and running a really good SM is still surprisingly affordable. Just look what you’d pay for a Maserati with Citroen brakes, like a Khamsin or a Bora. And if you want an authentic glimpse of 1971, jet-set style, this low-mileage car represents a superb sample of the way an SM was meant to be.

With this quality, and a superhuman SM-specialist history, this car would be around and above £40,000, which makes our estimate of £30 – 38,000 seem exceedingly reasonable. You know you’ve always promised yourself one of these, but only when you found a good one… 

Viewing is always encouraged, and this particular car is located with us in Abingdon. To arrange an appointment please use the ‘Contact Seller’ button at the top of the listing. Feel free to ask any questions or make observations in the comments section below, or try our ‘Frequently Asked Questions’.

If needed, please remember we have a network of trusted suppliers we work with regularly and can recommend: Classic & Sportscar Finance for purchase-financing, Thames Valley Car Storage for storing your car, AnyVan for transporting it, and Footman James for classic car insurance.

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