We wrote about the reworking SM2A does on the Citroën SM to create a contemporary supercar in our report on the 100th anniversary of Citroën celebration at La Ferté-Vidame, France last July. While you can read that here, Classic Driver just profiled Jean-Michel Gallet, founder of SM2A in a fascinating article about how SM2A came to be.
If you’d like motivation to read it, consider the perspective that Jean-Michel has about Citroëns:
| “We’ve always driven Citroëns in our family, and for good reason – they’re the best cars in the world. I took my first steps in engineering at the age of seven when I sand-casted aluminium parts by hand and accompanied my grandfather, who was head of a foundry, to meet his customers. At 16 years old, I was preparing and improving my first enduro bike, a Yamaha 125 DTMX, but I was already maintaining our family Citroën DS21. And at 17, I bought a Maserati engine, the one found in the Citroën SM, via the French magazine La Vie de l’Auto to study and understand it. Very quickly I was being given or sold DSs for little or nothing – at one time I owned up to 60 DSs at the same time and I’ve certainly taken over 300 of them apart during my career! Citroën DSs and SMs are great cars, but today people want an old car with the advantages of a modern car, especially in terms of reliability and performance. So, we give it to them – we’re the only ones doing that, building modernized Citroëns, because we have all the machines, materials, technology and expertise to do it.” |
Read the full Classic Driver article here: https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/cars/sm2a-france-has-saved-hundreds-old-citroens-scrapheap?utm_campaign=0042020%20Citroen%20Garage%20EN&utm_content=0042020%20Citroen%20Garage%20EN%20CID_88027cf78d1c8448d62074bc2c528020&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter