Citroën SM  

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The Citroën SM is a high-performance coupé produced by the French manufacturer Citroën from 1970 to 1975. The SM's design placed eleventh on Automobile Magazine 's 2005 "100 Coolest Cars" listing.

Styling

Designed in-house by Citroën's chief designer Robert Opron, the SM bears a vague family resemblance to the DS, especially in retaining the latter's rear-wheel spats. Seen from above, the SM resembles a teardrop, with a wide front track tapering to a narrower rear track.

The SM was unusually aerodynamic for its era, with Kamm tail and low drag coefficient of 0.26. The ventilation intake is located in a "neutral" area on the hood, which makes the ventilator fan regulate the interior ventilation at all road speeds. European critics marveled at the resulting ability to travel for hours at 200 km/h in comfort and with impressive fuel economy on the large 90 l (20 US gal, 17 Imp. gal.) fuel tank.

With its distinctly modernist influence, the interior styling of the SM is as dramatic as the exterior. The small oval steering wheel is matched by oval gauges. The manual shift lever 'boot' is a highly stylized chrome gate. The seats are highly adjustable buckets with centre padding composed of many individual 'rolls'. High-quality materials are used throughout. The bonnet is aircraft grade aluminum, while the external bright work is stainless steel, rather than ‘cheaper’ chrome (except for "plastichrome" "SM" trim at the rear base of the rain gutter).

In 1970, it was a car of the future and the fastest front-wheel-drive car, with a factory-quoted top speed of 220km/h, and independent tests achieving as much as 235. It was an example of the car as a symbol of optimism and progressive technology, similar to the SM's contemporary, the Concorde aircraft.

Media appearances

  • Burt Reynolds escapes a fleet of police cars behind the wheel of an SM in the 1974 film The Longest Yard. In the film, having driven the car to a quayside, Reynolds gets out the car and nudges the car into gear, causing it to drive itself into the water. In real life, he liked the car so much that he gave an SM to his friend Dinah Shore. Also in the Movie "The Longest Yard" As he's leaving the house, keys in hand, the female owner of the SM shouts "don't take my Maserati!"
  • Janet Jackson appears in an SM with a red leather interior in the music video for the 1998 song I Get Lonely from the Velvet Rope album.
  • Patrick McGoohan drives an SM in a 1975 episode of the American television series Columbo ("Identity Crisis", Season 5, Episode 3), while Gerry Anderson's 1971 television series The Protectors featured a platinum blue SM.
  • Ben Stiller is kidnapped in a green SM in the 2001 film Zoolander, and an SM is also used in an attempted kidnapping in the 1975 Charles Bronson film Breakout.
  • Sven Väth and Miss Kittin drive a modified Citroën SM in their video from the single "Je t'aime... moi non plus".
  • Norwegian composer Kaada and his music video 'No you don't' features an SM.

See also

Citroën SM[1] on Antwerpen Zuid



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Citroën SM" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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