A while back we ran a piece on small coupés here at ViaRETRO, which generated more than the usual number of comments. One of the cars we discussed was a petite French coupé from Simca, which was based on the Simca 1000 saloon, launched in October 1961 and known as the Simca Mille in its home market.
While a perfectly good small family saloon, it was also very staid looking, especially by French standards – a conventionally styled but neat little 4-door saloon that had its genesis in a collaboration with FIAT, at the time, the major shareholder in Simca, and this Italian connection was to be further exploited with this week’s Prime Find. The Simca 1000 was powered by a 944cc in-line four-cylinder engine situated at the rear and driving the rear wheels. The fuel tank was also at the rear, giving the car extremely uneven weight distribution of 35/65 front/rear, making the steering extremely light.
The car was an immediate success in France, and over time, a number of additional variants were introduced, with both smaller and larger engines (although the name remained the same), including the very cool looking Simca Abarth and Simca 1000 Rallye versions – the final Rallye 3 version pumped out 103bhp, compared to the original car’s 36bhp. Over its lengthy 17-year production run, over 1.9m of these compact saloons were sold, including cars built in Spain – a success by any measure.
However, it wasn’t the most elegant car to look at – even in Abarth or Rallye guise – and to boost the image of both the range and the company in general, particularly in overseas markets, some more Italian input was called for. Simca turned to Turin and Bertone, and the hand that held the pen that designed the very pretty coupé belonged to a young Giorgetto Giugiaro. Bertone built all the bodies which were transported by train to the Simca factory in Poissy and later, also to Rotterdam for final assembly.
The design proved an instant hit, and while the coupé was mechanically similar to the saloon, it’s styling meant the weight distribution was less biased towards the rear, and it was also more aerodynamic, so performance was an improvement over it’s four-door sibling, with a top speed of 140kmh compared to the saloon’s 125kmh. This improvement wasn’t solely caused by the styling – the coupé’s higher-compression engine produced 52bhp, quite a difference. The interior of the coupé was also more overtly sporting than the very plain dashboard of the saloon, and the car was altogether more glamorous.
Competing with the Renault Floride and, later, the Vignale-bodied FIAT 850 Coupé, the Simca 1000 Coupé sold well, and in it’s first iteration, 10,600 were sold before 1967 saw an upgrade to a 1204cc engine and concomitant name change to the 1200S – indeed, one of our readers, Steen, runs a 1200S.
Hmm…which would you choose?
For the third consecutive week then, our Prime Find is a coupé, this time one of the original versions of this very pretty car which in this country is properly rare – this example is believed to be one of only three in the UK, having been imported from France last year. It’s available via the same auction on January 25th as the little DKW F11 we featured last week, at Anglia Car Auctions in King’s Lynn – not often we feature two cars from the same auction. There’s not a lot of additional information on the auctioneer’s website, other than to state the fairly obvious (when you look at the photos) that the paintwork is less than gleaming, but the car is apparently “very sound and solid”. The odometer is showing a low 84,283km – I doubt that a car like this was driven extensively, so it’s possibly genuine, but there’s no documentation to prove it – or at least, none is mentioned.
This stylish little coupé would obviously benefit from having it’s paint worked on – possibly a respray in the not too distant future, and if it were mine, I’d remove the additional spotlights and change the wheels (I quite like the steel discs with whitewalls shown in the brochure photographs), but provided the body is as sound as described, shouldn’t require much else externally and can probably be driven “as is” for a while. The interior, from the single photograph shown, doesn’t look too worn, but obviously close examination is required before making the leap into bidding for and buying this car. Nevertheless, with an estimate of just £5,500 to £6,500, against asking prices of up to £25,000 for fully restored examples (of the 1200S version, admittedly), this might be a chance worth taking. Certainly whoever buys it is unlikely to run into another one at pretty much any classic event in the UK.
We’ve borrowed some pictures from the auctioneer’s website; their details are here – Anglia Car Auctions: 1966 Simca 1000 Bertone Coupé – and as always, caveat emptor applies.
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us inspire by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro