A teacher at my old school had an Interceptor FF. It was indeed a beautiful motor and an amazingly high-performance car for the time: 4WD, discs all round with hydraulically assisted braking and steering. Unfortunately, as with many other cars, the first oil shock did for it.

IMO, the SM is a genuinely beautiful car. It recaptures the elegance and esprit of the great pre-war GTs. There is no doubt, however, that it is both very fragile mechanically (thanks in part to its great complexity) and extremely difficult to drive. The steering does not re-center itself, which means that if you let go of the wheel, the car carries on in the direction it was going! Think about that for a second...

Food for thought that (for instance) a Subaru Legacy GT massacres either of these icons in terms of performance and ability (and indeed quite a few other classics from not so long ago).