A Maserati-engined grand tourer with hydropneumatic suspension and self-centring power steering, the most advanced GT of its day, sold under a badge the market still prices as a curiosity. Averages under forty thousand dollars.
The car
Citroën bought Maserati in 1968 and the SM was what came of it: a front-wheel-drive grand tourer, built from 1970 to 1975, with a Maserati-designed V6 in the nose. Around it went the full Citroën technical argument, hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension, and DIRAVI, a speed-sensitive power steering that weighted up as you went faster and returned the wheel to centre by itself. Composite headlamps that turned with the steering, on the European cars. In 1970 there was nothing else on sale doing all of this at once.
Why the market never caught up
The SM was expensive, complicated, and then orphaned: the 1973 oil crisis killed the market for a thirsty V6 GT, Peugeot took over Citroën in 1974 and sold Maserati on, and production stopped in 1975 after roughly five years. What was left was a car whose engine came from a famous Italian name and whose badge said Citroën, which is the wrong way round for a collector market that prices by badge. Fifty years on it is still filed as a curiosity rather than a grand tourer.
The money
Hagerty carries a base value of about $25,000, with a 1973 car in good condition around $32,800. Classic.com puts the average sale across the market at roughly $35,600, and recorded auction results for 1973 cars spread from about $18,600 to $65,400. The top recorded sale is $95,200, for a 1973 car in March 2025. So the whole usable market sits between roughly twenty and sixty-five thousand dollars, for a Maserati-engined GT of the same era whose Italian-badged contemporaries cost several multiples of that. Figures are indicative and move; check them against the guide at the time of buying.
What to watch
The complexity that makes it interesting is the complexity that ruins it. The hydropneumatic system and DIRAVI are rebuildable but not by a general workshop, and a car with a tired system is a large bill wearing a small price. The Maserati V6 needs its timing chains and valve clearances done properly and on schedule; deferred maintenance here is the expensive kind. Then rust, in the subframes and the front structure. Buy the sorted car with a specialist history rather than the cheap one, because the gap between the two prices is far smaller than the gap between the two bills.
At a glance
The TGC view
The Collector's Drive looks for cars whose reputation has not caught up with what they are. The SM is the clearest current example: the most technically ambitious GT of its moment, priced as an oddity because the badge on the bonnet is not the badge on the engine. We put clients in front of the specialists who can tell a sorted car from a cheap one.
Want us to arrange it?
We hold the relationships, the rooms and the access. Tell us the dates and we handle the rest.
Front wheel drive, inboard discs, no clutch pedal, a drag coefficient of 0.355 and Car of the Year for 1968. Then the engine failed under warranty and took the company with it. German dealers ask about fifteen thousand euros.
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