"The Martinique does not have a wooden body. The body is cast and sheet aluminium, with wooden fenders. And there's a bit of wood on the instrument panel and in a couple of top bows.

The steering is Citroën CX, not SM, and the turns lock to lock are 2.5 not "less than 2 turns." Just like a Chevrolet Camaro, as it happens. The Camaro is driven tens of thousands of miles each and every day, with perfectly ordinary drivers at the wheel, without problems.

The centrifugal cable is not "special" nor "speedo-like." It's a standard Citroën part, readily available, and in 50,000+ miles we broke two. I still have a considerable number of them, and even if the latest one were to break, no problem. The car is easily driveable without the regulator. I've done hundreds of miles that way.

I've never bought a new car that gave as little trouble as Martinique 002, the engineering development car. In 15 years and about 55,000, we have had a broken hydraulic pump drive belt, a blown air conditioning hose, two centrifugal regulator cable breakages, a leaking water pump gasket, and a failed electric trunk latch (a standard GM Cadillac part). Oh yes, and a flat tire in California, after having driven the car from Texas and running over a piece of sharp steel on I-5.

The car and chassis that were in the San Diego museum for a while are in my garage here in France, and when I recently took ex-Porsche design chief Tony Lapine for a ride, we had absolutely no problems with the car, which hadn't been driven in nine months. It fired right up, and whisked us off on our rounds without the least difficulty. The Martinique engineering development car has accumulated a lot of hard, fast miles, and it's ready for a lot more at this very moment. Our son drove it from Connecticut to Austin, Texas in 1982, without the least incident, and I drove it from Austin to Pebble Beach in 1985 to see the Bugatti Royales all in one place at one time, again totally without incident, apart from running over that piece of steel."