OT.... what the hell is this fuggly thing?

I saw it today while driving down the strip... yuk!

 

It's a Citroen,they come with factory hydraulic suspension.

 

thanks unk.... who ever owns it was getting married at one of the little chapels on the strip.

 

it's a french Cadillac, very nice ride

albeit a little foreign.

Paul

 

Driving an ugly car,AND getting married.
Some people don't know when to quit.

 

oh jeez 60s style, you need to change your tag line... I thought it said "like a cat he shits in a box"! hahahahaha

 

It's a Citroen. Probably late 60's. They had a wild air $ hydro suspension. I always liked them, really french.

 

Thats a Citroen SM.
They came with V6 Maserati engines.
Citroens are pieces of shit, but I like those engines...

 

You Got it Ian, I think it might even be a factory hot rod one, they did some specails with I think Maserati I know they looked weirder then normal and that looks weird even for a Citroen.
A guy I know scared the hell out of me in one of the ones that look like a 33-34 Ford, damn things handle remarkably well, I had us pegged for very sore going into the corner.....

 

The Italian motor in a French car combination was such a PITA that,in it's day,
it was the only car in the world you couldn't lease.

 

Uncl, I said it was a nice engine, I did not say it was reliable...

 

the only citroens I know are the little Bug looking ones that are flat on the sides that I saw all over when I was in Belfast... they were almost all painted twotone red/black and one had an infinity symbol painted on the side.

I don't like to admit it, but in college I owned a french car.... an 83 LeCar.... boy it sucked. I went from driving a 69 Mach I to the LeCar..... what a dark time in Gracie's young life...

 

Le Turd... That was a Renault.
The French produced Peugeot's too.
Dont buy any of them!

 

I was at a traffic light in Atlanta in my LeCar once and another one pulled up beside me but it was all souped up and some funky specially racing edition... the foreign guys driving it looked at me and laughed at me and hauled ass... hey, if it made them FEEL better laughing at ME... whatever. I thought they were pretty silly myself.

 

Ha Ha Ha...I worked at an "AMC" dealer back when the bulk of their cars were Renaults...if you slammed the door to the men's bathroom hard enough, parts fell off of the six cars closest to the building!

We had BRAND NEW ones on the lot we couldn't sell until we fixed some major problem or another...everything from shifters that came off in your hand, to cars that just didn't run!

 

Mine still sat in my back yard until this past summer when I finally found some idjit to pay ME $200 to haul it off. I had about decided to salvage the back bench seat for some other project and gut the car and make a trailer out of it.

 

Fat Hack, there were 6 Renaults parked in front of the bathroom and you still kept on walking untill you got to the urinal?
Thats will power, man...

 

[ QUOTE ]
there were 6 Renaults parked in front of the bathroom ...

[/ QUOTE ]

He didn't want to have something fall off one and land on his foot.

 

Aaaahhh Le Car... Makes me think of Dragnet. . I mean the one with Tom Hanks and Dan Akroyd.

Citroens were a cool design idea built badly. I am really not impressed by their designs currently either. They have a model called the Picasso and it is kind of an insult to the late artist. Huh Picasso and Von Dutch. Hhhhmmm somethings are better left untouched. (sorry, had too.)

I did a design presentation on the 2cv and it really had some cool features. The hydraulic suspension allowed a tire to be changed with out using jack.

neat huh?

 

Sorry Katz,
That was the DS, not the 2CV.

 

It's a Citroen SM with the Maserati V6 engine. It's a cult car now with a big collector club and they are pretty valuable. They were highly regarded when they came out. One writer for Car & Driver or Road and Track (I can't remember the magazine it was in) said it was the best car to drive really fast over wet mountain roads that he had ever driven. Pretty much all the reviewers priased the high speed handling characteristics of the car. The active suspension in the car was a technical nightmare to work on however, I have been told. Somone got one to go over 200 Miles An Hour at Bonneville with a heavily breathed on engine.


I had a friend (who I bought my 40 Ford from) who worked at a foreign car dealership in the 60's that sold Citroens. He said he could completely remove the engine in one of those cars in about 45 minutes. You could raise or lower the suspension as you drove, gaining about 6 to 7 extra inches of ground clearance for rough and bumpy roads. They are strange looking but they had a flat floor with LOTS of room inside. The SM's V6 has a nice exhaust note when you got on it.

 

Yeah Metalshapes I know. I guess it was kinda an unrelated story I was telling.

Hey, at least I didn't call it the car they drove in that one Charlie Brown episode.

 

I thought about it some more...
I think there are only 4 French cars I would ever own.
Citroen DS or 2CV, A Panhard or a Renault 4 ( The first car I ever drove...)
But it would get a healthy chop, a V8 and rear wheel drive...

Edit.
Strike that, there are cooler cars that would be easyer to build.
I'd rather build a Deuce Coupe...

 

Looks like fun don't it? Engine is behind the trans...

 

I absolutely love those things! Extremely wild design for a factory car. I like the earlier ones too from the 60's, more rounded, with those turn signal lights on the rear of the roof... interesting cars, nothing else like them.

 

at least it had skirts... but other than that it looked like a toothpick to me. I wouldn't want it even if I was Charlie Brown.

 

Here's a link to a pic (a little big for the HAMB) of the Bonneville SM Race/LSR car, with the owners SM that he converted into an ElCamino as a tow truck. I think the custom 5th wheel trailer has Citroen hydraulic suspension. They look pretty good as ElCams.


http://www.citroen-ds-id.com/album/images/ICCCR12_345/ICSMracerfromabove.jpg

 

Call me sick, but I dont think its fuggly at all. Its a piece of seriously rad design from the SEVENTIES (when european cars in general were cheap little boxes with even cheaper details, and american cars were huge silly sofas, with landaubars, operawindows, fake-wirewheels and softer springs than most furniture..

The Citroen SM was in fact the worlds fastest front wheel drive car when it was new. It has a 2,7 litre engine, but was still faster than the sixties pre-smog Toronado which has abt. tripple the Citroens enginesize. It also has factory hydraulics like all big citroens after 1953.

To say that "Citroens are pieces of shit, but I like their engines" are with all respect a pretty clueless thing to say, especially when it comes to the SM.
The engine in the SM isnt a Citroen engine at all. Its really Maseratis V8 minus 2 cylinders. Im sure its nice when everything works, but it has some problems which has given the SM a reputation for not being very reliable (I guess that means that the remaining SMs on the road are owned by carpeople who really want to drive SMs..).
The other big Citroens (both the DS/ID and the newer CX)usually have very standard engines, much like Peugeots. They will soldier on forever and start every day ( I have driven a bunch of different Citroens in lets say "norwegian weatherconditions", so I know). They are solid, but nothing to get exited over.
The thing to love and hate with Citroen is the rest of the cars. I drive a CX these days (my old man has had 5 of them I think). It has lots of small bugs, especially electric ones, it rusts, the injection is not easy to figure out and its a total hell to wrench on. Its never 100% in order, even if it starts every day and I guess this makes it a "piece of shit" compared to a Toyota or some other bullitproof thing.
The upside is the ridequality (has to be tried), the absolutely boss steering (which even more has to be tried) and the pushbutton brakes in the floor (it can outbrake anything), the one-spoke steering wheel, the low, comfy seats, and that I like the low, swoopy profile, especially the nose (hate all the CX's eighties, plastic details, though..).

Back to the SM. I think its a pretty cool design. Check out those 6 small headlights under the clear plastic cover (the inner 4 follows the direction of the front wheels while the outer two is fixed). Its something Winfield could have done..

 

It's a Citroen SM and I think it's beautiful. It was an amazing piece of work for it's time. You can buy them really cheaply these days, but their time will come.
Chapron DS Citroen Convertibles are selling in the $250,000 range.

 

Nice cars ,so nice a guy brough me one to me for transmission work 20 years ago.I wouldnt touch it sent him to a friend that does work on that type (odd) of cars.Owner never picks up car,he stills has the motor to this day.