The Futuristic 1972 Citroën SM | Jay Leno's Garage

well another episode of jaylon's garage pandemic edition the car featuring today 1972 citroen sm this is a car well i've had this car about 35 years and early on before we're on youtube we did a short video of this car so it's why we haven't put it up here because we had a video on it once but it's only like four minutes and reading the comment section uh you guys have seen it parked over in the background all these years where that's where i was parking and uh i kept getting requests could you show that one again so i thought we'd pull it out just like we did the monteverdi a while back and uh and do a longer version of it and show you some of the unique features of this car just an amazing automobile when this car came out well it's a 2.7 liter v6 4 cam maserati engine and a citroen you know sichuan has always been innovative as far as style handling engineering not so much the engine the engine's always been sort of pedestrian at best uh the ds that was supposed to have a flat six that didn't work out they just put a regular water-cooled four-cylinder engine in it and a little underpowered it was okay it was okay uh so they wanted to build a luxury car you know sichuan had well over 30 percent of the market in france and they built two cvs and all sorts of well even the ds is a luxury car but they also built a cheaper version they wanted some high-end you know england had jaguar switzerland had model verdi america had cadillac germany had mercedes-benz they wanted a situation up at that level so they come up with this the sm it is a four-seater with a five-speed what happened was they realized the engine they were developing just wasn't going to work so they looked at maserati they loved the maserati v8 but they realized that was too long to fit under the hood so they needed something a bit shorter and maserati was in trouble so sichuan bought a controlling interest in maserati they liked it so much they bought the company it's one of those sort of deals you know and they developed this v6 which i heard two schools of thought some people say it's just a v8 with two cylinders lopped off others say no that is actually developed separately on its own using a lot of the v8 engineering you know a v6 is not inherently well balanced so it took a little a little time to do it a little tricky but they did it fairly quickly and as i said i've had this car 35 years runs drives perfectly this was the first quote foreign car in america to win motor trends car of the year and it wasn't just like there's a couple of guys in motor trend it was a very distinguished panel of which phil hill america's only world champion was one of the judges so that'll give you some idea of how seriously they took it and it was such an innovative automobile the trouble was and this is why i heard that the editor soon got fired for picking this as the car of the year because unlike an american manufacturer ford uh american motors general motors gm when they got car they oh they'd run full-page ads car of the year and buy advertising time with citroen oh thank you very much they couldn't have cared less they didn't really buy any ads and the the publisher felt they lost a fortune by picking this car but they picked it because it was the best car it was also the world's fastest front-wheel drive car prior to this the world's fastest front-wheel drive car surprisingly was the oldsmobile toronado of 1966 i think at a top speed of 123 miles an hour this was closer to it varies between 137 142 but that's that's really quite fast this car features citroen's famous innovative hydropneumatic suspension uses nitrogen gas and this green fluid to well give you the best possible ride you could imagine i mean it is amazing what a smooth riding car this is you go over potholes you can't you can't tell this system was so good rolls-royce licensed it because they couldn't come up with anything better i believe mercedes-benz also licensed it as well i know for a fact rolls-royce did and it really works quite well it has a lot of bizarre features it takes a little getting used to to drive one of these because the pneumatics did the suspension it also does the power steering and it also does the brakes so this isn't like a regular car where you've got to change brake fluid and all that kind of stuff there is no brake pedal there is what they call a mushroom it looks like a little button that's on the floor and you apply pressure to slow down you've had this it's the first car to have rain sensing windshield wipers you know in france anything over 2.7 liter was considered sort of a big engine and subject to a huge tax you know before the war the french built all these magnificent cars with engines of 5 liter 4 liter three and a half liter and then after the war they they realized no they wanted more quote people's cars regular automobiles not so much the luxury class and that whole segment of the market disappeared from france altogether so for sichuan to build a luxury car if it was over 2.8 liter which is the limit it was over that the tax would have been hooked just crazy so they went with this four cam it was 170 horsepower this was certainly not the fastest accelerating car out of there the coefficient of drag on this car was .26 and i can attest to that when i drive this on the freeway and i take my foot off the gas i freewheel it's not really freewheeling but it feels like it because you're literally cutting through the air so swiftly it doesn't slow you down you know when you drive a big car like a cadillac or something with a big front end and even the countach which has coefficient of drag well in the force you take your foot off the gas and you feel the wind this cuts right through also this is the only car i have that i can drive in the rain without using the wipers because it literally just sort of beads off i mean there's a little bit of rain on the windshield of course i do run the wipers but you don't really need them quite as much because there are dynamics of it it's got a cam tail which was pretty revolutionary back in the day because pete brock was one of the first guys to use that you know people think oh it should taper off no the cut off tail was actually more aerodynamic and it has what do they call the steering it means devon devise something like that but the faster you go the less power steering you have meaning so at parking speeds there's no feel at all and the faster you go the more feel you get i mean it's really fascinating you also have the wheels always come back to center if you park this car with the wheels turned they will come back to center i did that once i i parked it towards the curb and then i walked away and i saw it rolling down a hill so i quickly jumped in it and stopped it but other than that it's pretty cool and it's got the best five-speed transmission at least stock i've ever used in a car it shifts so smoothly it's such a pleasure to drive this car and it gets good gas mileage but at the time this was the same price as the top of the line mercedes benz probably about 14 000 in 1972 by the time you're out the door i think it listed for like 12 and change something like that which was a lot of money when i was a kid i worked for foreign car dealership called foreign motors in boston and in 1971 the rolls-royce carnegie i believe was 29 900 something dollars and that was like the most expensive car you could get so that shows you how long ago that was uh anyway these wheels that were sort of carbon infused plastic it predates carbon fiber but it was a very light light wheel it was revolutionary as well so this thing weighed 3 100 pounds so it literally like an arrow cut through the air it is so relaxing so much fun to drive wind noise is well not non-existent you get a little bit because this rubber tends to go a bit old but because of aerodynamics just very smooth very comfortable to drive you've got a hatchback that lives up let's open the hood and show you what it looks like under there now this is something if you pulled into a gas station in america in 1972 and asked the guy to check under the hood he would be he would just well here i'll show you what i'm talking about this doesn't look like any american car at all under the hood where are we here oh hey this is something that would frighten any gas station attendant in america because it doesn't look like anything they've ever seen before there's your 4 cam v6 back there your transmission is forward of that air conditioning here these here look like something from some science fiction movie from the 50s day of the triffids or something but what they are these are your suspension pneumatic system this top of the globe is filled with with nitrogen and there's fluid below and obviously you can't compress the fluid so the nitrogen will compress that's how the hydraulic system or the pneumatic hydraulic system works you've got shafts and belts i mean it's very complicated but it's still just a car and it it can be worked on reasonably easy it's just that a lot of people didn't have the time or patience and i somewhat blamed citroen because they did not really you know they didn't really service the american market very well i don't believe they taught a lot of the mechanics the correct they just sold these cars and you were sort of on your own you see this here this little this turns these headlights turn i've retrofitted the european system and in america for whatever stupid reason you couldn't have headlights that move they had to be stationary whereas this these headlights turn we go around the corner you cut this wheel these two outer lights remain stationary the inner lights turn so it literally lights the turn so you can see if there's somebody there if there's a tree or whatever it is and it's just brilliant but they were illegal so those had to be fixed or taken off in america i found a european system and i i put it in and it's just the greatest thing for night driving it's so far ahead of anything we had certainly back in the day and this car still looks modern i think you could put this body style out today and people would find it attractive it doesn't look like a look at any other car that's 50 years old and they look old compared to this thing battery is down here we run a modern optima battery because there's no gas or acid from that there's your green fluid goes way up in there you feel you fill that up with that special you know people make the mistake i'll just use transmission fluid no you have to use citroen's own brand of fluid it's the only thing that works and if you just pay attention do the maintenance the way it's supposed to be don't modify it don't have somebody tell you they can make it better just put it back to stock and it'll last you well it's lasted me 35 years and i've never had a really a big problem with this at all we have a guy here named jerry hathaway who is the well he holds the world's record for the fastest situation well over 200 miles an hour and uh he's sort of the guru and he's helped me maintain this car and does a wonderful wonderful job so i want to thank him okay let give you some idea what's happening under the hood let's move to the back of the vehicle okay here we are at the rear of the vehicle and you you probably can't see the heated uh wires in here this could defrost the rear window which is common now but was pretty cool back in the early 70s this is sm world that's the name of jerry hathaway's uh citroen shop that he used to have he doesn't have it anymore sounds like some sort of sort of masochistic thing but no sm world you say i'm going to sm world really well no no it's a car place oh okay but let me show you the trunk or the hatchback i guess press this stick it up and you probably got a good sized trunk here's all my green fluid in here this is what you use okay lhm plus fluid yes yes yes and like one you can no you don't drink it don't don't don't drink it um okay let me put that back in there just a car cover have a full spare with a jack this car is held up very well i mean the chrome everything here paint everything original [Music] i take care of it i drive it i do routine maintenance on it you know if you keep these things stock and you try not to get them well most people can't avoid rain here in california don't get that often but i rarely even wash the car i pretty much just wipe them all down and that keeps water from getting in the places down in here and other places like that where it can cause corrosion come on let's take a look at the inside this is one of the most inviting interiors you're not so funny american cars in the 70s i think some of the worst american cars actually were built in the 70s whatever the reason was we didn't care anymore we thought we had the market soda and some of the most fascinating european cars started to be evolved from the same i mean look at this dashboard this is contemporary even today you know there's no silly velour upholstery like a lot of gm cars had from the 70s just horrible i love this single spoke steering wheel so you can actually see all the gauges you know most cars that have three spokes like this you couldn't see the gauges uh you've got your radio down here i always like a sideways radio i think corvette sort of started that in 1963. got your ashtray here this is something i just added this just tells you how many volts we're putting out to make sure it's uh it's okay now it's parked right now it's 12.2 volts so that means my battery is good hand brake you got air conditioning here you have a clock you've got your glove box here and you have oh a secret glove box here look at this huh officer no i don't have anything bad no and then you open this and you see the whole and you got a separate one over there um as i say these came fully equipped with air conditioning which was unusual for uh european cars to have that i'm not sure if it was standard it's certainly standard the american model and look at these seats i mean they're just very french they're just the whole design the whole look uh what's the guy's name robert oberon i think that was his name he was the designer of these cars uh brilliant just brilliant designer i mean i just love this car because even today it looks like the future you know you ever notice whenever they show a car from the future it's always a citroen it's always a ds which was developed in 55 or something like the sm because it just looks like what people think the future will look like you've got a full back seat um and you can actually get adults back there i've got these seats all the way back and there's still room you've got your suspension control here you can put this car all the way on the ground or bring it all the way up this is how you use your height adjustment here this is the standard setting that'll bring the car up to normal road height when you want to be as high as you can possibly go you put it in the end setting there that brings the car up see if you're in snow this is what you can do as you can see that's quite a bit of ground clearance now let's put it back down [Music] gonna be first low rider let me put it in the normal driving position this is about where it would be if you're going down the road but the cool part is if you're going down the road and you see snow or you're going off-road you're on a dirt road or something you just put it all the way up i mean it's pretty cool the cool thing about this system is it allows you to drive this car in three wheels if you don't have a spare or your spare is flat as well the way you change your tire in this is you put your suspension all the way up you put the jack underneath it and then you drop it down and that raises that wheel we'll take this thing next door put it up on the lift and i'll show it what it looks like underneath okay we've got it up on the left i've got my flashlight as you can see uh it is pretty smooth pretty clean aerodynamically under here look at the exhaust system it is there you got these twin pipes coming all the way to two mufflers up here see how it's all sort of set into the body of it so the aerodynamics don't get interrupted you know with most rear-wheel drive cars you've got a big muffler hanging down a few other things you don't have that there's your you can't really see much under the rear here let's move towards the front the exhaust system it's clean it's tucked up underneath so it doesn't disturb the airflow here's the really cool part i got my flashlight your disc brakes are inboard you follow what i'm saying here your engine is right here here are your disc brakes on each side everything happens up front on this car you got a couple of drain tubes there see the disc is not on the wheel for unsprung weight or to save rather unsprung weight what you're hearing in the background are airplanes my shops right here at the airport uh but it's pretty smooth pretty clean under here a few drops there's your air intakes a couple of air intakes for your brakes see there's your disc brake there there's your other disc brake there they can't be more than what 18 inches apart something like that pretty cool here's your grill your radiator your horns your front brakes uh yeah it's uh it's a pretty the disc brakes is what really gets me it's really really pretty cool no fun to change but pretty cool engineering and just a smooth aerodynamic situation happening underneath here i love the little resonators on the end here and that's pretty much it i think it's time to put this flashlight away and go for a ride as i said this car is about 110 000 miles on it a lot of unique features my favorite one is the fact that this is the world's best rain car because when you hit the brakes the front end doesn't dive the rear end does rain goes down like kind of like a boat in the water just kind of goes down like this you know it's really quite cool with 170 horsepower no it's nowhere near the fastest car out there but certainly one of the most satisfying to drive you know when you put your foot in it enough torque to pull you along pretty quickly as you slice through the air i enjoy watching the attack come all the way around and with the top speed lost about 140 miles an hour it's it's well like i say it was the world's fastest front-wheel drive car when it came out an interesting story earlier in this video i showed you how the hydraulics work and how you were able to drive on three wheels because you could lift it up you could lift up one wheel literally there was an assassination attempt on charles de gaulle what was it 12 guys on motorcycles literally flying machine gun bullets at him in his motorcade his guy you know uh obviously downshifted took off they blew out the rear tire he used hydraulics he lifted the wheel and he drove away on three wheels i mean it was it's exciting in fact charles de gaulle after the car saved his life and he did credit citroen with saving his life uh he made certain the official car of france yeah that's pretty cool i love this gear shift lever beautiful polished anodized i guess you call it they did make an automatic i don't know why anybody would buy that to me the joy of driving this car it's such precision that's a great listen to a great sound it's quick enough and it feels fast obviously he's not going to blow the doors off a corvette or maserati or you know anything like that but it's just different it's it's a different kind of car if you were a wealthy family guy back in 1972 he had a wife and kids and a two-seater car was out of the question or sports cars out of the question this was a good family car because you could go anywhere with it and you put the kids in the back and these seats are really comfortable and they're steering just see it will always come back to center see you leave the wheels like this it won't i got my foot on the brake you know that's that always goes goes back to center and the faster you drive the less power steering you have because it's it's uh it gives you back more road feel parked like this you can turn this wheel with one finger no problem almost like one of those you know chrysler dreamboat cars of the 50s you know that power thing but then as soon as you're moving you get that real road feel back again france was never quite obsessed with nurburgring the way other manufacturers were they were more about getting to their bird ring comfortably and in style and this thing's got a lot of style it's really timeless robert ober i hope i'm saying his name right robert oberon a genius just a genius just a brilliant designer the french do style so well nothing garish about this car nothing where you go oh what is that you know i mean i i consider 1958 probably the worst year for style and american cars because they just put the chrome on with a trowel you know giant chrome bumpers giant chrome everything uh the french always did it just just perfectly the french you know you sip wine here in america you drink a 44 ounce big gold you know now i talked about not modifying these so that's so i don't sound like too big a hypocrite my friend jerry hathaway uh came up with a proportioning valve so this doesn't lean quite as much it's taken a lot of the lean out of the hydro-pneumatic suspension system so uh which i like makes it handle a little bit more sporty but other than that the car is completely stock they came out with a carburetor yeah this is a carburetor version i think by 73 74 they came out with a fuel injected version the thing that really hurt the citroen why they only built 12 000 of these their market for this car was america and sichuan had been led to believe because they were a smaller manufacturer at least in terms of american manufacturing that they could get an exemption for the impact absorbing bumpers which i guess were mandatory from 74 on they just thought okay they can build it this way there was no way you could put those giant stupid impact absorbing bumpers on one of these and they thought they had an exemption well literally a month or two before they said no they america said no you can't bring it in and they were like really that's it so all the sms that were destined for america were sent to japan and let's sell them over there and it was too bad too because i think we missed out on something brilliant these turning headlights are a revelation especially in the early 70s you know when i first got this car it was great i'd be on mulholland drive which is the windy road up here in los angeles everybody goes and i cut the wheel i could see into the corner before i got there i mean i had never had that happen with an automobile before it was amazing i mean you've got big windows here you got this greenhouse effect which is very nice you know one of my pet peeves with the modern camaro is i feel like i'm the window's like a letterbox and i'm crammed in where's this you've got nice wide windows you've got a high roof even though it's a low car you know my head doesn't touch the roof on this thing and i'll show you what i mean the aerodynamics when you get off the gas the speedometer doesn't move it doesn't drop because you're not fighting that wind resistance you know you can't just hop in one of these and drive away there's sort of a learning curve the steering will screw you up people go zigzagging down the road when they first pull away for the first time and the brakes you don't you don't jump on the brakes you just apply pressure to the floor you just put your foot in that button and touch it ever so slightly and you come to a full stop no problem and with the inboard disc brakes unsprung weight obviously reduced this is a fabulous car for taking a long trip in because it's really comfortable it's not like a lot of modern sports cars where you're just you know that recaro bucket seat is beating up it's so tight and confining i've never had any problem with this engine you know people have situates complained about them and rightly so because situated just did not provide the technicians or the uh the parts availability or the service people here didn't understand them it was unlike anything built in america ever so it was like a car of the future and even though it's only 170 horsepower you find yourself going whoa i'm dope geez i'm doing 80. you know you don't even realize it it's about 100 degrees here today in los angeles and air conditioner works fine i just had my hand on the dash and made me realize how hot it was everybody should drive a french car at least once in their life just to get the feel of it just to sense what it's like it really is it's not about the horsepower it's about the whole package you know so many american cars are just about the horsepower drum brakes leaf spring suspension but five six seven hundred horsepower and horsepower can cure a lot of problems i'm the first to admit that but when you have a well-balanced package like this ah it's just so enjoyable to use good gas mileage pleasant environment you know these were so cheap for the longest time because when they were broken nobody could fix them and they just sat and sat i mean a guy three houses up from me he had one in his garage for like 15 or 20 years eventually he left it abandoned and i would have taken it but he moved away he didn't say where he went and i guess the car eventually just got taken to the junkyard one day which was sad because it was a nice one you know i believe you could release this car today looking exactly the way it does and uh it would still be successful well that sounds weird because it wasn't that successful when i came out but i don't think it had to do with the car i think it had to do with the circumstances you had that big gas shortage in the 70s opec and all that nobody wanted to buy what was then a 13 or 14 000 car uh it seemed wasteful you know all sorts of reasons but it's still a great looking car to me and still a contemporary looking car i haven't seen any modern cars are as good looking as this thing don't you love those headlights the way they turn there are a lot of awful good uh youtube videos about the citroen sm out there uh you should check out some of those uh as well if you enjoy these cars i just thought it might be fun to kind of take your ride hopefully you shared with you the feeling of what it's like to drive it and how pleasurable it is i mean again it's not about the speed it's fast enough it's about the handling the sensation it's so much of how it makes you feel and this car really makes you feel fantastic when you're driving i hope you enjoyed this and uh uh hopefully this pandemic thing will be over soon but uh we'll just keep doing these this way and i hope you like them i'm sorry we can't get a lot of the fancy shots and things we get when we have my camera crew and stuff but i like to keep these videos coming i'd like to keep uh i don't want to break up the rhythm you know with this pandemic thing we lost so much of uh of our regular routine so this is one routine i'd like to keep going see you guys next week [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 793,301

Rating: 4.9519172 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, French cars, Citroën, SM, Maserati, pneumatic, turning headlights, car porn, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, 1972 citroen, 1972 citroen sm, citroen sm jay leno, citroen sm sound, citroen sm drive, citroen sm jay lenos garage

Id: 6QH6q3C_W3k

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020