You picked literally the only thing about it that wasn’t innovative. Show me another car from 1955 with unibody construction, all-round disc brakes, fibreglass roof, all-round hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension, hydraulic braking, built-in crumple zones, an engine that slides under the car in the case of a crash…

No... The SM is barely a different car. It’s a DS coupé with a different engine.

Oh yes totally. Great strategy on paper, make a car so advanced you won’t have to replace it for twenty years (which worked twice), but it was a money pit.

Cabriolet? Did they keep it? That thing must cost in the hundreds of thousands nowadays!

Not if you know how to take care of it. The DS has never had a poor reputation in France where all mechanics knew how it worked.

They say that nowadays conventional systems are just as good... I suspect if Peugeot-Citroën hadn’t been extremely close to bankruptcy after the 2008 crisis, they wouldn’t have abandoned it. Today Citroën is working on a simpler system with hydraulic bump stops, the previews have said it’s very good. And DS will bring…

It’s complicated and needs proper maintenance. It was never a problem in France where all mechanics are used to Citroëns, but abroad it’s another story.

Nonsense, the DS was great because it was revolutionary and like nothing else on the road. You simply can’t pull that off twice.

Citroën bought Maserati, not the other way around. Were would an artisanal company like Maserati have found the cash to buy a huge carmaker like Citroën? Also the DS came out under Michelin ownership of Citroën, not before. In fact it’s the complicated launch of the Traction Avant that caused Citroën to be bought by…

I raise you the Talbot/Simca/Matra Rancho, which I consider to be the first crossover, even if it didn’t light any sparks back in the day. Faux offroad styling, not that much ground-clearance, and a wagon-van hybrid body on FWD car platform. Crossovers have always been about appearance and not actual ability, so in…

Well that tends to happen when you list the best cars in a given class ;)

They’ve made panel vans, trucks and buses before.

Pretty much sums up the entire current crossover market.

Sweet! Pre-1998 I assume since you don’t like the interior? I don’t know about build quality but the post-1998 interiors with the different steering wheel and the silver fascia look quite good to me.

Not too bad either! Do you mean an early 90's Spider IV or a 916?

That’s my point, a shame they had such mitigated success when the cars were so interesting. Too little mass-market appeal and a lingering poor reputation, I suppose.

Yeah but it really is so very rare... I wouldn’t want one without a nice paint/leather combo and the choice would be very limited with the 2.2. I would probably go for the 2.0 if it means escaping silver/black leather. A shame those are so common when the car can look so much more special in dark grey or blue, and…

And with the 20V 5-cylinder turbo there were properly quick as well.

Where do you live? Here in France there are tons of manual ones. The 2.2 are the really rare ones however.

Mid-1990s to early 2000s FIAT group seems to have had so many things going for it, frankly. They had plenty of interesting engines with the Twin Sparks, the V6 Busso, the 5-cylinder 20V, so many great-looking cars across all their brands (Fiat Barchetta and Coupé, Alfa GTV and GT, 147, 156, 166, Lancia Kappa and Delta…