The Zoute Concours commemorated five important automotive birthdays.

Zoute brought together an astonishing set of SM rarities

Citroen’s strange luxury coupé celebrated its 50^th birthday, and the organisers managed to conjure half a dozen rarities that are unusual even by Citroen standards.

The biggest installation was a 1971 CITROËN SM2A developed by Citroën Specialist Gallet, on a 1971 SM lorry coachbuilt by Tissier. These cars stole the show at Retromobile 2020, and they also impressed here.

The other combo is a DS converted into a trailer, conveniently called “the Rig”, designed by Jerry Hathaway.

This caravan is quite a sight with the fitting dual-axis trailer even without the double-edged slogan “SM Club”. Get your whips! 🙂

Apart from one standard model (in showroom shine state), the others are couchbuilt special editions. The first one is a red 1971 SM Espace, built by the French coachbuilder Heuliez with a patented sliding lamella roof.

The car was unveiled at the Salon de I’Automobile de Paris in 1971, but Citroën did not approve the project, and the Heuliez family kept the car for their personal use.

The next one is a 1972 Mylord Cabrio. Coachbuilder Chapron built only half a dozen specimens.

The 1973 Opera is familiar from Autoworld’s 100^th anniversary of Citroën exhibition.  As in the past, french coachbuilder Henri Chapron produced several variants of the Citroën SM.

The Citroen SM Opéra is a unique, stretched, four-door saloon version. This red one was the third of seven built.

Audi’s modern masterpiece is becoming a classic

Audi’s iconic Quattro model celebrated its 40^th-anniversary last year, and Zoute caught up in 2021, following the cancelled 2020 event. I still recommend the Quattro exhibition of Autoworld, which provided an excellent overview of the model’s history with race cars, rarities and milestones.

The Audi Quattro was a road car that spawned one of the most iconic rally cars ever and easily the most iconic Audi model ever. The Zoute Concours showcased two rare versions and two milestones.

The earliest Audi Quattro series was also known as Ur-Quattro and stole the show in Geneva with its signature Quattro drive (Autoworld showcased this concrete exhibit last year).

The production car was Powered by a turbocharged 2.1 litre 10V 5 cylinder engine that got to 100 km/u in 7,1 secs and reached a top speed of 0-of 220 km/u.

The showcased Audi Quattro, finished in Diamond Silver metallic, is a very early one from the first production series with only 87.000 km on the clock.

The other silver car is a 1989 car with the steering wheel on the wrong side 🙂 .

The next car is a red 1985 Audi Sport Quattro, the race car’s homologation basis. In 1982, the World Rally Championship introduced Group B racing, requiring at least 200 road-going units for homologation.

The weirdest of the four is a black 1984 Treser Quattro Roadster. This car is from a limited series of 39 vehicles custom-built by Walter Treser GmbH between 1983 and 1989.

Walter Treser was a former racing driver and test manager at Pirelli who led the development of special vehicles at Audi. From 1980, as Head of Audi Sport, he got in charge of Audi’s rally program. One year later, he founded his own company, Walter Treser GmbH, and in 1983, he presented the Treser Quattro Roadster at the IAA in Frankfurt.

The car’s most striking feature was a patented electro-hydraulic controlled Hardtop, way ahead of its time, as the sales figures confirmed.