SM Tribute by DS Cars marks ten years of the model and indicators daring issues to return

A decade into the existence of DS Cars as a standalone model, spun off on the promise of reviving the design delights of Citroën’s golden period, the corporate has created a dramatic homage to the previous as a means of pointing to the longer term.

Fairly a number of individuals – this publication included – spent the primary chunk of DS’s life urging it to be just a little bit extra daring in its design strategy. Let’s hope the SM Tribute is the form of issues to return. By tackling some of the iconic designs within the Citroën portfolio, the late Robert Opron’s magnificent sports activities automobile iteration of the long-lasting DS, the Citroën SM, the corporate has made a robust and chic assertion.

This isn’t simply an train in restomod engineering, within the method of the current Renault R17, however an try and think about how an SM would look in the present day ‘if it had continued to develop over the previous 5 many years’. Opron’s imaginative and prescient resulted in a big, space-age vehicle, with huge bonnet, faired-in rear wheels and numerous technological improvements. It took the quirky technical brilliance of the Citroën DS and changed into the primary super-coupé, a grand tourer for the Euro-sophisticate.

Beneath the bonnet was a Maserati V6, a results of the 2 corporations getting into into an ill-starred three way partnership within the cash-strapped Seventies. Citroën truly purchased Maserati in 1968, however the revolutionary potential of this Franco-Italian marriage was solely evident on this one automobile (and maybe the Maserati Quattroporte II, which paired the SM platform with a boxy Gandini four-door physique – simply 12 had been made).

This mixture of Italian exotica and French design perfection has made the SM a cult object. Alongside its much more common and profitable DS sibling, it is without doubt one of the vehicles that many really feel must be the beginning level for a design-led, Citroën-inspired model. And now right here it’s. The SM Tribute.

Really, the automobile you see right here has its origins in a styling train again in spring 2020, when the DS Design Studio in Paris was casting round for methods to reinterpret the SM. ‘We’re engaged on the genes of our iconic fashions to gas our analysis into the form of future fashions that can come alongside on the finish of the last decade,’ says Thierry Metroz, DS Cars’ design director.

DS Cars’ press launch pointedly doesn’t use the phrase ‘Citroën’ in any respect, referring solely to the SM as a standalone machine. It additionally neglects to carry up the spectre of Maserati, although each manufacturers have now been reunited beneath the Stellantis umbrella. It’s not massively stunning to search out DS Cars going all-out with the full-on retro imagery, with a Paco Rabanne-style gown, lashings of brown inside trim and blurry targeted presentation, in these photos. Automotive tradition is as cyclical as all different types of visible language; it’s normally purely sensible causes like value and laws that cease outdated beloved designs from being churned out repeatedly.

There stays one thing very fascinating concerning the SM Tribute, which made its public debut on the Chantilly Arts & Magnificence automobile present this week, ostensibly to have a good time ten years of ‘artwork and class’ beneath the DS Cars title. As Citroën doubles down on turning into a design-led, low-cost quantity model and DS Cars reiterates its trendy French luxurious focus, that is exactly the form of automobile that might give the latter a lift.

Frédéric Soubirou, DS Cars’ head of exterior design, explains how the group delved into the historical past of the SM. ‘We had been impressed by finding out a number of SM fashions, together with prototypes and the 2 presidential SMs. That they had a hanging trait, like a signature. They appeared like flying on the street, they had been very aerial.’ Positioned aspect by aspect with the unique you’ll be able to nonetheless see an actual delicacy to the Opron design, a high quality that’s close to not possible to seize within the trendy period. The shift in wheel sizes over the previous half century can also be instantly obvious.

Though the brand new design ticks a number of apparent packing containers – part-faired-in rear wheels, the tapering bodywork and sweeping dashboard – different parts come from the applying of current DS Cars signature supplies and finishes. These embrace the bi-tone paintwork, a freshly modern look that harks all the way in which again to the Nineteen Thirties, and a 3D display screen throughout the entrance finish of the automobile that comes with the fashionable LED lights – a nod to the unique SM’s glass entrance.

Inside, the dashboard show is projected, with a yoke-style driving management and seats that references the defiantly Seventies model of Opron’s SM. Laser-engraved leather-based is paired with Alcantara within the inside. ‘It is not only a portrayal of the SM,’ Metroz continues. ‘We now have revered the unique design via its spirit and particulars. We now have completed a transcript and reinterpretation of the SM. However as it’s not our behavior to disconnect from our different work; we have now included loads of particulars about what DS Cars fashions and our future initiatives are.’

We will’t be the one ones hoping that this automobile – or one very prefer it – emerges from DS Cars sooner or later within the close to future.

DSautomobiles.com, @DS_Automobiles