No. 473 is the last-built M35, according to Citroën it rolled of the production line in Rennes la Janais on March 12 '71. Shortly after that it was delivered to a doctor in Metz, departement 57 Moselle. He drove it for two years, the oilchange card told 59.945km at Januari 29 '73, when I bought it it had around 63.000km on the clock. Probably he drove it until mid '73.
After taking back the M35’s they often stayed at the dealers, were donated to museums, destroyed or stored at La Ferté Vidame testcentre. The latter probably was this ones faith. Later on dealers got a second chance to get an M35 for their collection, this one was transported to a dealer in Saintes departement 17 Charente-Maritime. The proof of it was partially hanging from the windscreen, the glued-on transport-note from Transport Citroën Celia. The other part ws with the cars papers. The part on the windscreen was left their after the restoration (like the Gauloise-butts from the first owner in the ashtray). The two parts were connected digitally. The key label was still with it as well.
In ‘88 the car was found by the collector and brought from Saintes to the north of the Netherlands, were it rested until 2007.
After that it went with 16 M35’s to another collector in the north of Holland. In 2010 14 of these went to my storage, including No.473.
Why choose this specific one, it's certainly not the most beautiful or best one. I had a few reasons for that, amongst these the fact that this car was constantly trying to get my attention, sometimes it works that way with a car. When I was getting more into the details of M35's, this appeared to be the last one-built. It didn't immediately show because the car didn't have stickers on the fenders at the moment. This ofcourse added a lot of value for me. When the collector collected it in Saintes, for this one time he took his brother with him, his name was Sander. And when I found out we are about the same age, it was sure this one was going to be mine.
We tried to find out more about the first owner through the Conservatoire and even through the former director of the dealer that most probably delivered the car to the doctor in Metz. We didn't succeed. Also we tried to get more info from the dealer in Saintes, but a few years ago it went to another owner and with that the history of the company was lost. When I was preparing the restoration I found out a funny detail in the car, the armrest in the right hand door had never been mounted. The holes were pierced, but the rest had never been screwed on. Probably they went out of armrests and stopped the production of M35's.......
This is a picture of one of the first rides after I had done the technical work. Martijn van Well made it during a meeting of the Dutch Ami-club in september 2010.