Jerry Seinfeld Laughs Off a Citroën SM with Dave Chappelle

Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy series Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, has become a popular web series talk show.  For each episode Jerry, as executive producer and host of this series that features vintage cars, funny conversations and a lot of caffeine, picks up each guest in a special car.  In a previous episode (season 2, episode 13) he and French comedian Gad Elmaleh puttered about New York City in an old 2CV.  (See: https://citroenvie.com/jerry-seinfelds-2cv-experience/).

In the latest show (season 10, episode 62) the web series has been picked up by NetFlix and is only available to watch through them.  However as far as the 1973 Citroën SM featured, you won’t miss much not watching it as most of the show features Jerry and Dave in conversation inside The Diner, a local Washington DC coffee shop. 

The SM is featured only briefly at the beginning of the show and at the end it doesn’t run at all.   That’s no fault of the SM however.  When they were filming, the SM’s ignition was left on and the battery drained.   

The SM used in show belongs to Brian Brandt in New York City.  Producers of the show contacted Brian and arranged to transport it to Washington for the episode as they wanted to film Dave Chappelle in his hometown neighbourhood. 

Brian says there was an Optima yellow top battery installed in the car, which though was a few years old, he always kept on a trickle charger.  It worked OK for Brian, but apparently not for the film crew. 

    

The show keeps a mechanic on hand in case of problems with the classic car featured on each show, and in this case Seinfeld’s mechanic replaced the battery and all was OK.  They actually took very good care of the car and Brian got a fresh battery in the deal.  In fact, the SM was shipped back to Brian in working order and he only knew of the dead battery because he saw this local Washington TV news clip video on FaceBook:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWishOfwlzQ

 

Tech note on Optima batteries; They require a special trickle charger.  If they go flat they can be revived if you put a fully-charged battery in parallel with the Optima, then put the charger on the good battery. 

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