What is it with the French and their magnificent market failures? This is the Citroën SM Opéra, a galactic market failure which makes galactic market failures like the Renault Avantime (total made: 8,557) look positively submicroscopic. For this, to be specific, is one of the eight Citroën SM Opéras ever made.

Don’t you just hate the French sometimes? To top all those ludicrous meals and silk scarves, their presidents used to ride in a drop-top Citroën SM.

Transcontinental hooligan Alex Roy just bought a mint Citroën SM and blogged about it. The video contains footage of the suspension being magical and such. We do not own an SM. We feel sad.

Aaron Severson, editor of Ate Up With Motor, explains what happens when a bunch of tech-mad Frenchmen buy an Italian supercar factory and drink too much at lunch. This is the history of the space-age Citroën SM. —Ed.

The Art Deco love child of Citroën and Maserati is long gone, dead and buried like its contemporary the Concorde. But have we really lost the need for a grand tourer with speed and style in spades?

What better way to reintroduce the modern motorist to the joys of vehicular self-maintenance than with well-endowed women with fake French accents showing how to change the oil on a Citroën SM? NSFW