...or, how to whip an SM into shape

Jerry Hathaway became a Citroën dealer by default. He was the suspension man in the service department of a Los Angeles Buick dealership when de dealer added Citroëns to the inventory. It took only one look at the Citroën V-6 engine and transaxle assembly for most of the dealer’s flat-rate mechanics to know they didn’t want to have anything to do with the car.
Not so with Jerry. He was already well past the point of being challenged or excited by front-end alignments and control-arm bushings: he wanted to learn something new, and the Citroën was it.
After a few years with various outfits that made part-time attempts at being Citroën dealers, Jerry ended up as the Southern California Citroën connection, cathering primarily to owners of the SM version, a sleek 4-passenger vehicle produces between 1971 and 1974.

One of Hathaway’s customers was hot-rodder and ex-Bonneville dry-lakers racer John McKibben, who kept talking about what a great shape the SM had for a Bonneville Land Speed Record car. The words sunk into Jerry, who had always wanted to be a drag racer bur never had the time to pursue it. He had a SM at his Van Nuys, California, shop that looked like it had been rear-ended by a freight train.It had been purchased originally to be cannibalizes for its parts. Instead , it ended up totally rebuild, from the steel monologue up.

Motor Trends’s Car of the Year in 1972, Hathaways’s SM race car is one of only 1.700 such vehicles delivered to the US from a total production of 13000 units. It retains the stock fully independent hydraulic suspension and 5 speed manual transmission. The engine is the original-equipment dual-overhead-cam aluminum Citroën/Maserati V-6 of stock displacement.
It is equipped with three 48 mm Weber carburetors and the usual hot-rod cams ans pistons an produces an estimated 250 horsepower from its 183 cubic inches (3.000) cc-enough power to pull the 3.127 pound front-wheel-drive Citroën to a speed nearly 154 mph at Bonneville’s 4.400-foot elevation.
But this is jerry’s first race car, so there will be no stopping at 150 mph. Already completed is an engine fitting with AiResearch turbochargers.

MOTOR TREND may 1981