Gadgetory

some cars predict the future in one way or another but the Citroen SM did it in at least five ways I'm Brian Cooley with the top five tech innovations of this odd-looking masterpiece a few of which appeared on its predecessor the DS we're gonna rank its tech features by importance and how well they predicted future popularity number five composite wheels they were made of carbon reinforced resin and weighed only about nine and a half pounds each roughly half the weight of a steel wheel even today the use of composites carbon fiber and ceramics and cars is exotic but in wheels still almost unheard of unless you look at products like carbon revolutions see our nines they're fifteen thousand dollars a set about three grand more than an entire SM cost when it was new number four rain sensing wipers this is before the modern electronic sensor era so the SMS wiper motor detected the current needed to wipe and move the blade it translated that into an approximation of how wet or dry the windshield was an adjusted wiper speed accordingly Rube Goldberg e'en today every car has intermittent wipers at a fair number also since the presence of rain automatically number three automatic suspension under the hood of an SM you'll see all these little odd green orbs those are reservoirs that have pressurized fluid in them pumped around to the cars corners that's how it adjusts its ride height leveling and shock damping no Springs now similar systems are used on supercars today but it's still pretty exotic more down-to-earth are the related magnetorheological adaptive suspensions like GM's magnetic ride control but even it can't lift up the car for a tire change the way an SM can number two adaptive headlights home market FM's had six headlights up front in an array that made the car look like it was wearing Google glass they both leveled themselves and aimed automatically based on input from the steering wheel unheard of them this is a widespread feature in the last handful of years but it was so far ahead of its time in the 70s the US law didn't even know what to deal with it so us-spec sm's had to substitute for dopey sealed beams that did nothing except turn on one of the great tech buzz kills in auto history before I get you to our number one amazing Citroen SM feature here's one that's more oddity than breakthrough the brake pedal it really isn't it's this rubberized button or bulb on the floor that only has about an inch of travel for the entire range of its braking force if you ever get a chance to drive one of these I'm pretty sure that'll take the most getting used to the number one piece of tech that the SM had first is variable steering it adjusted the sms hydraulic steering assist according to vehicle speed so the amount of assist got less the faster you drive and it was only two full turns lock to lock that aided slow speed maneuvers and parking and the wheel inside the cabin was adjustable in both height and reach this is amazing stuff back then it's an area where the SM saw the future most clearly so common in cars today by the way technology is what killed the SM in America that adjustable suspension we talked about back at number four it also moved the bumper height up and down so it various settings it was out of spec with US law Citroen was not about to abandon the feature for that reason so they abandon the market instead high tech cars and modern driving that's what we do at CNET on cars.com i'm brian coulis thanks for watching