GiveMeABreak wrote:IMHO if the SM can't be restored, I'd rather see its parts used as a donor to help keep other 'proper' SMs on the road. It all seems a bit false to have some Japanese hooey parading about masquerading as an SM - Sacré bleu!
Yeah but I don't want a restored SM. There are plenty of SM's around and my car has been used to help others. The auto gearbox has been offered back to me as I have traced back the previous owners, no one is crying out for 3 speed autos
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The engine block is in a Belgian car and the other parts not on the car are somewhere in Holland and Poland.
So my initial thought was to take Robert Opron's initial idea of a flat 6 aircooled motor into the SM, but scene tax in the 911 market is sphincter tightening for a rebuilt 911 3.0 engine.
I also looked at the old V8 quattroporte engine that they used in the Maserati of the time, but much like the 911 this might have been affordable 15 years ago but not any more.
I looked at some other interpretations of what some people have done such as Subaru SVX and other Citroen/PSA engines, hell at least it doesn't have an LS7 crate motor
So why did I go towards an electric car? From a philisophical perspective the Citroen and indeed most French cars are not about the engine. Getting into a DS or SM it is comfort above all else, issolation from the journey rather than being a part of it. You get the feeling that they only put the speedo in as a point of conversation with your passengers rather than driver involvement.
The whole car looks simple, it hides the things that other cars excentuate and yet an unimaginable amount of engineering and design is underneath. To your point about it being a Japanesse car in a coutore dress well that could be one way of looking at it. I am cool with that, but for me I don't mind as this car was forward looking and alot of what they were trying to achieve with the Citroen was quiet issolation by using technology to get from A to B.
For me at 42 I find carburetors, distributors, no O2 sensor, OBD port free cars just as baffling?