Citroen in the US . . .
Citroen sold the D series here in the US through the ‘72 model year. There was a full dealership organization with East Coast headquarters in New Jersey and West Coast headquarters in Los Angeles. In ‘73 they brought over only the SM, and after that nothing at all. I’ve heard that they applied for an exemption from bumper standards for the ‘74 SM but didn't get it from the DOT. That’s really sad as the introduction of speed limits on French and Italian highways due to the energy crises absolutely killed SM sales; production went from 2619 cars in calender year ‘73 to 294 cars in calender year ‘74, then 119 in ‘75 before production ended in May, when D series production also ended. Had they been able to offer it here in ‘74, no doubt Citroen could have moved several hundred SMs. The CX conversions were done mostly in Holland and sold in small numbers in the ‘80s. Unfortunately, since the cars had to be bought at full price then converted to US spec they were very expensive. After that about 10 XMs were converted but it was just too costly to continue.
Citroen never offered factory installed a/c in US spec D series cars. There were some factory authorized units in Europe (I recall one of the factory manuals noting the installation of the Sofica “Capri Console”- gotta love that name!), but these were dealer installed until around ‘72 when they came out with a very nice well integrated unit that had little eyeball vents in place of the slatted vents at each end of the dash. Here in the US various makes of a/c were also installed by dealers, most notably Fridgeking and Mitchell Mk. IV. I have seen a couple of the trunk mounted units but these are really rare as they make the trunk almost unusable. Around 1970 the US dealership organization backed Coolaire as the standard manufacturer of a/c. To their credit, Coolaire did some attractive Citroen-specific underdash units, but like all Coolaire products they were made out of cheap and breakage prone plastic. Citroen did offer factory a/c prep packages for US spec cars. Initially this consisted of installing the old style left side battery tray instead of the newer ‘69 and later style right hand tray, as the compressor needs to be on the right side. Around the same time they modified the transaxle housing to provide some nice bolt holes for the compressor mount, which was much better than earlier mounts that relied on the right hand parking brake bolts. Late ‘71 brought the slotted front bumper which allowed the use of two small condensers behind the bumper sides rather than one in front of the radiator. Unfortunately, most all commercial systems relied on a York compressor which has high cyclical loads that aren’t kind to the engine’s timing chain. At the time some savvy owners would fit a Frigidaire compressor that was huge and heavy but much smoother in operation. By now most cars have been fitted with a Sanden/Sankyo compressor that’s the best of the lot.
Regarding that nasty Borg-Warner fully automatic gearbox, I suspect it was developed mostly for the SM. Given that the list price of the SM was rather more than a V-12 Jaguar E-Type (and over twice that of a fully loaded air conditioned DS21 Pallas with leather), Citroen realized that they needed to provide both five speed and automatic transaxles. The five speed was relatively easy to develop from the basic D series four speed box, but it took awhile to do the automatic in conjunction with Borg-Warner. The first automatic SMs came out in mid ‘72, so there really wasn’t time to get that unit into US spec DSs before the model year ended along with American sales of the D. Incidently, there is a lot of confusion over engine and gearbox availability in the SM; many European sources incorrectly say all automatic SMs are 3 liter cars, and all 3 liter SMs are automatic. Neither is true, as all ‘72 SMs had the 2.7 liter engine, while all ‘73 North American spec cars were 3 liter, in both cases regardless of the gearbox type. Thus, there were several hundred 3 liter five speed cars produced and probably as many 2.7 automatics. The automatic managed to make the otherwise rapid SM into real sluggard around town, and it was unreliable to boot. I’ve always wished Citroen had offered the hydraulic-shift BVH/Citromatic gearbox in the SM. It would only have been slightly slower than the manual, and vastly superior to the Borg-Warner. On the D series cars, the five speed was a great success but no doubt the Borg-Warner hurt performance even more than in the SM, which is saying quite a lot!
