In the 1970s, a man named Jerry Hathaway, besotted with the glorious Citroen SM, began work on modifying one of the French beauties in the hope of making it really very fast.
Images: Gooding & Company/Mike Maez
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Own this wild 202mph Citroen SM and its pickup/trailer
Down tools, friends, and feast your eyes on the fastest and wildest Citroens you’ll see
Using a 1972 SM, Hathaway treated the 3.0-litre Maserati V6-engined front-drive coupe to many performance tweaks – better cams, new pistons, that sort of thing – to boost the power way past its original output.
It managed a heady 151mph in ’79 at Bonneville Salt Flats, but this was just the beginning. Soon, Hathaway added a big fat turbo and in 1985, took his Very Boosted SM back to Bonneville, where he hit a whopping 200mph.
Job done… or so you’d think.
Just two years later, Hathaway’s wife Sylvia bested his record-breaking run with one of her own, cresting 202mph. She set a class speed record that stood for an incredible 23 years.
The Hathaways even built a custom SM pick-up truck to trailer the thing around (following the theft of their original trailer back in 1980). This pickup used Citroen’s own suspension and carried its own battery for the hydraulic pumps. Both trailer and truck are a) height-adjustable, b) easily the coolest things you’ll see for a long, long while, and c) both up for auction.
Gooding & Co is offering the 202mph SM and custom pickup/trailer for the frankly bargain price of somewhere between $100k and $200k through its ‘Geared Online’ sale. That’s without a reserve.
The auction kicks off next Monday, 18 January. Glorious coupling, isn’t it?
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