The weirdest, greatest supercar you'll ever see

C'EST MAGNIFIQUE!

Robin of Omaha recently sent these pics of a true oddity. Even in stellar condition its not surprising to see this ride hunkered down at the mechanic as it is fearsomely complicated. Behold!

This is a 1972-1973 Citroën SM in Jaune Bouton d'Or (also known as Buttercup Yellow). This thing was so ahead of its time that it shouldn't even be gauged against other automotive makes.
While we're staring this thing in the face let's talk about the main visual difference between the European and U.S. models. In France the SM had 6 square headlights placed behind angled glass like the middle panel above. Also in France the headlights turned with the front wheels! The glass cover and turning ability of the lights were both illegal in the U.S. which is why we can't have nice things. 

Just look at this strange creature. It could be from outer space or the depths of the ocean. The body is extremely aerodynamic which helped take advantage of perhaps the most incredible feature of the SM: it came from the factory with a Maserati V6 motor under the hood!
Those wheels are steel with stainless trim. If you preferred a lighter weight rim they offered a first-ever carbon fiber resin wheel option. As long as this thing is it won all kinds of rallies and races when introduced. When it hit these shores it won the Motor Trend Car of the Year award, a rarity for a non-domestic model at the time.

Top speed from the factory was listed at 140mph; no small feat for an early '70s luxury touring car. It is fitted with the self leveling hydro-pneumatic suspension that was made famous by the earlier DS. Four wheel disc brakes provided for the shortest stopping distance of any car tested up to that point. The suspension system was set up so that under hard braking the car would lower evenly.

The styling is so awesomely French!
Supposedly you could drive this car for hours at 120mph with no discomfort, achieving 19 mpg the whole time. The steering took some serious getting used to however. It is a unique variable powered assist that allowed for no road feel at all. Citroën recommended 50 miles of careful driving to get used to the steering as it was so sensitive. I've never driven (or ridden) in one of these but accounts are that once you get over the learning curve other cars feel archaic and old fashioned to steer.

To add to the futurism the windshield wipers detect rain when set to the lowest setting and will turn on and off as needed. This is a feature just becoming more common now. If we could pop the hood you would see a bizarre sight; a pair of honeydew melon sized spheres painted forest green are on the top sides of the motor, attached to two green tanks. They are the hydro-pneumatic suspension components but they look crazy to the uninitiated.
This car came about because Citroën bought Maserati in 1968 and they decided to marry the high performance motor to this design which was already years in the making. Unfortunately that means maintaining one of these involves a Maserati specialist and a Citroën mechanic.
The lovely sensualists of France underestimated the immovable and indifferent federal safety regulators of the U.S. and assumed they would get an exemption to the 5mph crash safety bumper regulations coming due in 1974. They did not and as a result the SM stopped being imported overnight. It is a shame as this car represented a bright future in automotive design where speed, efficiency, and pure style could work in harmony. Instead we kept producing bloated dinosaurs until the industry almost totally collapsed at the end of the decade.
Viva la France (and Italy)!

The perfect blend of luxury and crushing brutality

THE PERFECT BLEND OF LUXURY AND CRUSHING BRUTALITY

I was gazing out the front window of my shop when this improbable vision presented itself:

Yowza! This is a 1971 Buick Gran Sport Stage 1 GSX 455 in Apollo White with a Red stripe. The name is a mouthful but suffice it to say that each major option added another title to this ride. 

Basically this is a Buick Skylark body (the sibling to the Chevelle, LeMans/GTO, and Cutlass/442). If you really wanted brute power you upgraded to the Gran Sport which came standard in '71 with a 455V8. If somehow that wasn't enough and you were trying for the Most Powerful Muscle Car on the Road you had to throw an astonishing $1,100 on top of the Gran Sport option for the GSX Stage 1 Performance and Handling package. Very few were built and fewer remain but get this: the '71 GSX outperformed the HemiCuda! Blasphemy they say!

That's right. The whopping 360 horsepower and 510 lbs of torque this setup produced helped the GSX outperform both the 454 from Chevy and the mighty 426 Hemi. The 455 block weighed approximately 150 lbs less than the Hemi which made a huge difference. In fact the GSX held the record for highest torque rating of any American performance car for 33 years until the V10 Viper came along. 

Keep in mind that this is a Buick; second only to Cadillac in the GM hierarchy. Unlike the miserly list of delete options the Mopar Hemis sometimes required you could get your Buick fully outfitted in creature comforts. You'll never see a GSX with a factory delete rear seat or heater, and the body parts are all regular steel.

I barked out to this guy "is that a '71 Stage 1?" and he yelled back "yup, with the 455!". Then he proceeded to light up the tires for me as much as he could in heavy traffic.
I love the idea of a Buick walking into the final round at the muscle car table only to drop a royal flush and walk away the victor. The value is plenty strong with auction prices for these getting close to $200,000 for numbers matching examples. However it is still a Buick so fit and finish were excellent and the non-performance parts are widely available. This is the perfect example of a car that can be eviscerated with rust but still worth your while to restore as long as the drivetrain, vin number, and build plate are intact. 

Sweet little rally racer lying dormant in in Red Hook

CIVIC RALLY CROSS

Thankfully the late coming snow has now washed away or melted. However just a couple weeks ago this was the scene in Red Hook:

This tiny little car is a 1990 Honda CRX Si in Granada Black Poly.

I'm showing this pic next because it neatly sums up this entire ride. DOHC on that little trim piece indicates a Dual OverHead Cam engine.

 MUGEN equipped stands for the Mugen Motorsports company. Mugen was founded by the son of the founder of Honda; Soichiro Honda. As a result it is about as legit a badge of aftermarket performance parts as you will find.

Combine those details with a broken marker light, rusted brake rotor, and dented fender and that's this CRX in a nutshell.

The CRX was introduced in 1983 as a 2 seater version of the Civic. The three letters stand for Civic Rally Cross.

As dusty and beat as this thing looks now somebody spent a lot of money on modifications at some point. This is a race car parked on the street. The hood is a fiberglass replacement with a cheesy deep reverse scoop accented in LOOK AT ME purple.  

These cars are tiny - just over 12 feet long. From the factory even the earliest, most frugal models handled incredibly well. Parking is so easy that it's like having a private space wherever you go.

This was a great era for Honda. There was a 4 wheel steering option for the Prelude where the rear wheels turned slightly in the opposite direction of the fronts. The result was a Honda that outperformed Ferrari and Porsche in handling! That innovation combined with the legendary durability of their cars was spectacular for their reputation.

All CRXs are true 2 seaters. I rode in one back in high school as the 3rd person and it entailed jamming my legs between the front seats and laying flat in the trunk area, looking up at the sky. There is ZERO extra room in these!

This tiny wing probably helps with the already enviable drag coefficient. 

That shockingly green thing in the window looks to me to be a valve cover. Maybe the engine is disassembled at the moment? Actually upon further review it looks like an engine in a plastic tub.

Yeah bro now we move on to the bro area of this ride. BUILT NOT BOUGHT is the sort of ridiculous macho crap that dudes slap on their car for other dudes to admire. Please rotate your hat and show respect. Do you even lift bro?

Cool dude I totally get it! That little sticker means kiss your ass right? Sweet!

Putting blackout stickers over your taillights seems ridiculous to me. The best thing about the bumper with those 6 holes in it is that it's cracked and might be replaced.

In many ways this design is similar to the '71-'73 Ford Mustang Sportsroof (fastback) as each has an equally useless rear window. Unlike the Mustang Honda augmented the visibility by making that panel between the taillights and the wing out of glass. Heavily tinted as it is you can still see through it enough to back up without hitting something.

I bagged on the bro-mods a bit but in reality I've always loved the CRX. It was eventually replaced by the Del Sol which has a removable targa roof but lost some of the charm of the original for me. If you somehow found one of these that was rust free or close to it in running condition I would highly recommend picking it up. You'd be hard pressed to find a better blend of fun and reliability. 

2 cool cars with an identity crisis

NOTICEABLE VERSUS OUTLANDISH

I'm bringing us back to the halcyon days of Summer when I found the following 2 rides roosting in Moosic, Pennsylvania. That's Moosic like "moo-zic" as opposed to moose, ick.

Get a load of this color! What we have here is a 1971-1972 Pontiac Ventura II in Buccaneer Red. This is basically a Pontiac Nova in an early case of badge engineering. The Chevy Nova was so popular that GM introduced almost identical versions in each of their divisions. The Ventura was first, followed by the Buick Apollo and Oldsmobile Omega in '73.

With the quad split grill this is my favorite of the faux Novas. This grill only lasted for the first 2 years. 1973 brought a split grill in 2 larger segments.
The rear side windows come to a point in the rear which means this is a standard coupe with a trunk. Beginning in '73 these were available as a hatchback. You can identify hatchbacks by the rear window being squared off. They even offered a tent that attached to the open hatchback for camping! Those are so rare it's almost like they never existed.

This hood is Ventura-specific and helps to make the trademark Pontiac pointy schnoz look like it belongs on the car. The Nova, Apollo, and Omega all had a single raised line going down the center. Under the hood lurks either the 250 inline 6 or 350 V8. There was a sporty Sprint option that allowed for the 307 V8 as well.

The "II" suffix alluded to the fact that there was an earlier, full size Ventura in the '60s. was dropped after 1972 even though this compact version soldiered on through '77.
Enough with that flashy but correct ride, let's get goofy!

Yeesh!
This sickly looking tough guy is a 1967 Dodge Dart in the unmistakable 1970-only color Sublime Green. The color was one of the High Impact range offered from '69-'72. The High Impact line included Panther Pink, Plum Crazy, Go Mango, and Top Banana as well as others.

I think a 1967 Dart 2 door is a great car on its own. This person obviously wanted a Hemi Dart which was only offered in 1968. However the turn signals are round on the '68 and slightly inset from the location of those above. Who could blame the owner for making a tribute? There were only 80 total Hemi Darts produced and they were reportedly the fastest muscle car of all time. Hemi Darts had the hood with massive scoop as seen above. The hood and fenders were fiberglass, bumpers aluminum, and doors acid dipped to save weight.

Other weight saving details included the omission of a back seat, no arm rests, no window cranking mechanism, and thinner glass. They were sold with no warranty specifically for "supervised acceleration trials" (that's drag racing to you rubes). From the factory the Hemi Dart was good for a 10 second quarter mile at 130 mph!
If you want to be noticed this is a great way to go I suppose. You're setting the bar high though as you'd better have an earth shattering beast of an engine under the hood to back up the look. I have to say the black wheels and blackwall tires look pretty great on this beast.
Well that's that. Summer's coming people just hold on a bit longer!

Rally Sunny hidden in plain sight

RALLY SUNNY HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

On a bright and sunny summer day in Park Slope I walked by this rugged little punk. It was looking a little out of place all covered in tattoos and generally scruffy. The more I looked the more I dug it!

This is a 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R Coupe in Super Black. Laugh all you want; this is a little rally car.

At first I thought some kid threw a bunch of racing stickers all over his crap ride but it quickly became apparent that this thing actually races.
The SE-R Coupe was a hopped-up version of the thrifty subcompact Sentra (known in Japan as the Sunny). It introduced the now-legendary SR20DE motor which stands for 2.0 liter Dual overhead cam Electronic fuel injection. This car set speed records for subcompacts and has been a darling of the small car racing scene since.

Triple mounted rally lights perhaps? I can't think of what else would cause these crude cuts. I'd like to point out that there are no less than 4 plastic ties in this pic: the white on on the right of the grill is joined by 3 black ones seemingly holding the grill to the car. She's been around!

I'm guessing the arrow points to the towing point where you should attach a winch if pulling this little tough guy out of a ravine.

These little numbers are hood pins. Most cars that have them don't need them (I'm looking at you new Mustangs that will never crest 90mph). However if you intend to throw your car around washboard dirt roads, over jumps and bumps, and cross little streams then they are a practical assurance that your hood won't pop up on you while driving. You can own a car for 30 years and the hood will stay closed, but if you go off road the factory latch can give up at the worst time.

The SE-R came stock with 4 wheel disc brakes and MacPherson struts.

The clean spot on the door is where this has worn a number for some race. You can just glimpse that this thing is fitted with a full roll cage inside.

Yes! 2 racing seats and a full roll cage replace most of the interior. For those of you who might not know rally racing requires 2 people to do. The job of the driver is to go as fast as possible while listening to constant instructions from his passenger; the navigator. The navigator has the entire course or route broken down to each and every corner, bump, obstacle, etc. I found this rather ridiculous example of a rally team in action but it still gives you the idea.

A sunroof is nice when you're cruising along on a sunny day but in serious rallying you need rigidity more than a big hole in the roof. This problem has been crudely but effectively solved!

This is the most homemade heavy-duty mudflap ever just bolted right into the car. I imagine this thing has been on some wet, muddy races where you want the window open for ventilation but don't want a face full of earth slopping up at you.

Those '90s wings don't do a damn thing but at least it's on a real race car for a change.

You never know which direction your car will be facing after you break through a fence and slide down into a creek or something, so here's another tow point on the rear.

Well there we have it; a true race car registered and parked on the streets of a highbrow neighborhood. It's truly refreshing to see a car that was built for performance actually living the dream. So many high dollar muscle car cream puffs sat coddled in a garage being polished more than driven.
My favorite examples of race cars being raced despite their value are the huge Bentleys of the 1920s and '30s. These cars are worth so much and are so heavily insured that many of their owners do race them hard. The thought is that racing is what they were meant to do, and if you wreck it the value is so great you can rebuild it no matter how extensive the damage is.
Hats off little racer!