(first posted 2/2/2013) coopey shot this in Spain, and has a bit of commentary on the Spanish version of the Simca 1307/1308GT, which in its day was a quite advanced car, very much in the VW Passat idiom, and won Europe’s COTY in 1976. The ones produced in Spain were called Chrysler 150:
The 150 has become one of the rarest Villaverde products, even in areas nearby to the plant. They didn’t age very well and a reasonably high amount of them already rust in peace in scrapyards. And then there are cases like this 150, with a questionable rejuvenation.
The GT was one of the top trim levels. It wasn’t as well equipped as the posh SX but it offered more extras than the other three lower trim levels. Plus, its 1.4 liter engine with a Weber double-body carburetor was more powerful. It made 85 BHP, 17 more than the S, GLS and LS’s 1.3.
I thought this looked familiar,it was the Chrysler/Talbot Alpine of the late 70s. Most of them have long since died.They were never as popular as the opposition but were a step up from British Leyland cars
This must have been one of the last Chrysler badged cars in Europe before they sold the European operations. The most famous product to come out of Chrysler Europe that is known to most US drivers is the Omni/Horizon which was Chrysler’s first “world” car.
I can’t recall seeing any of these in England in the eighties. What was the total production run? Tons of white transit vans with a copy of the Sun on the dashboard, though!
The British climate is very hard on cars,you’re never too far from the sea.Birmingham rust is the same as Blackpool rust!
There were a few of the Talbot badged version of these around South Yorkshire (where I grew up) in the eighties. Not many but I definitely remember them.
Not sure how to find what the total run was, but howmanyleft.co.uk says there were 13,254 of them on UK roads when its data began in 1994. Today there are 63, 40 of which are SORNed.
http://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/combined/Talbot_Alpine
The Talbot versions of this car were quite common in the Netherlands in 1984. They had that French way of looking really old and worn out even when virtually new, but they seemed to sell okay.
Assembled in New Zealand as the Chrysler Alpine and then Talbot Alpine, high-spec hatchbacks only. They made a weird contrast in the Todd dealer showrooms with the prehistoric Hunter (Arrow) and the broughamy Valiants. Dad the gadget man briefly had a Talbot SX in bright orange, mainly because it had the first NZ-made trip computer as standard. Reasonably popular when new but yes they didn’t age well.
On a different tack, and bizarrely, the Russians copied it as the Moskvitch Aleko.
The body next to the A-pillar, sans the front clip, actually. The 2141/ Aleko had trasnverse engine / FWD layout, McPherson IFS and torison-crank rear end, much like the Audi 80/100/5000 – but with a BMW-like SOHC (or Lada 1600) engine (a bizarre combination, indeed).
In 2008-2009, I happend to own an Aleko 1500 (all in all, a good car for its time, which was mid-to-late 1980s, but very poorly executed, much unlike the older RWD models which have been built like small tanks; later traded it in for a 2007 Ford Mondeo), and one of my neighbours (yeah yeah I’ve got a lot of ’em… and many of them are/were driving CC’s 😉 ) was driving a Talbot Solara (a 4dr sedan version) at the same time, which is still kept garaged somewhere in the nearby, AFAIK.
So, I had a chance to compare the two, and would say that IMO the Moskvitch was better designed (not surprising considering its germanesque underpinnings), while the french car surely betters in interior ambiance (better plastics and overall much nicer trim) and leads in overall build quality (surprisingly, not drastically, though – actually, many of the Mossie’s quality and rust issues seem to originate from the Simca).
Thanks to the long wheelbase and wide body of the Simka, it was roomy – in my student years I happend to stuff 7 people in it. I was also surpired by the ability of the old Mossie to start in low temperature, up to -27, when even some brand new cars needed jumper cables (one of the most popular accesories in the area). I repainted it original Cherry Red and simulated the Simca’s silver bumpers and crome trim on the door frames using Chinese silver spray paint from local retail store ) which didn’t look as good as I intended though.
And a small detail – my dad’s co-worker keeps a Mossie built for Belgium in about 1989, and it was waaay nicer than the mainstream cars, with two-tone tan interior (color-keyed to the body), higher grade Yugoslavian plastic trim (soft plastic – nothing resembling the crude Yugo/Zastava’s hard molded plastic dash, mind you), door-to-door carpeting and better fit’n’finish.
Those lasted as well as the stuff VW was pedalling at the time none can be found here from either brand from those years, disposable cars
They aged like the VW of the era, not well at all and now both are very rare in NZ.
Nicely summarised Alistair! A friend’s parents has an ’82/83 one here in NZ in the late 80s. It was actually quite nice to travel in – and looked quite pretty too. Had ongoing engine issues though (camshaft I think?).
I’d never heard of the Moskvitch Aleko until you mentioned it, and I read Stanislav’s comment. I always love learning new things like that, it filled my OCD need for trivia nicely lol!
Pretty cool car, looks way better with it’s original grille instead of this red mesh nonsense. And what the hell is going on with those black things on the hood?! I do like the alloys this one is wearing, though – as well as the black/red paint.
Y lo dice uno que lleva los asientos rojos y el coche azul, jjj ya sabras tu el estado en que se encontraba cuándo lo compre
What about the 4 door sedan version the Solara?. I had one, built at Ryton . RHD version suffered engine knocking because the engine had to be turned around to fit the steering rack which caused oil starvation!.
Solaras are even more scarce,they weren’t as popular and were dropped after a few years
My parents had a 1307 S (1.3l, dual 2v Weber, 82hp) when I was a kid and I now use a ’78 1307 GLS (1.3l, 1v Solex, 68hp) as a daily driver.
Those cars were sold as Chrysler-Simca (Chrysler’s Pentastar on grille, Simca emblem on hood and hatch) up to 1979 when Peugeot bought Chrysler Eu. Then, they were sold as Talbot before being renamed as the 1510 (minor redesigns). There were really good cars on their days, well finished and confortable, but a bit noisy (solid lifters) and with short-life synchros on 4-speed gearbox. They also rust like hell, hence so little survivors.
Handsome and practical cars but, like the European Horizon, of which virtually none are left, incredibly rusty, seemingly no rust protection at all. Already by the mid-80s many were completely rusted out, as shown in this short video: http://www.youtu.be/DhMIV0VM70I
That’s a serious case of girder worm!
Hi,
Fond memories – my Dad had 3 in a row from 1978 to around 1985 – first with the 1.4 litre engine and then with a 1.6 and 5 speed box, in the series 2, which had a revised front end, with the grille and lights sloping rearwards, rather than undercut.
Always nosy though, and power steering was really a necessity.
Styled by Roy Axe before he left Chrysler UK for Detroit
Oh, those cars were the “luxury cars” when I was a child. I remember how my relatives who emigrated to France drove those back in summer to my mother’s hometown. Compare a car like that to my dad’s Seat 850 and you will understand this sense of humiliation… Until you realize that barely no Chrysler 150 survive today and you can still find Seat 850 in passable conditions…
I do rememer a ride in such a car like that
BTW, the old immatriculation system in Spain helps trace the year the car was built. M stands for Madrid and B for Barcelona, for instance… then the two letters start with AB in 1973 (if I recall correctly)… This car must be a 1980
It looks like a Chevy Nova or Toyota Corolla of the eighties. from the sides.
Looks soooo much like a Dasher, from the rear and sides, the front? Not so much.
Looks okay for the 80s, but I would buy the German “original” because it has a better parts support. This Chrysler “variant”? I would buy it if the price were “right” and I wanted to stump folks at Cars and Coffee.
Since this was first published Ive seen exactly one here, very rare cars now the metal termites plus our six monthly inspections coupled with anal rust regs has seen the off. And VW products of that era are nowhere to be seen, but then again the used import boom saw many repairable cars scrapped for minor faults.
“coupled with anal rust”
Ouch.
I didn’t know there was a ‘sporty’ version of the Chrysler Alpine. They were pretty commonplace when I lived in England in the late 1970s and I saw a lot of the Simca versions from over the continent (usually with French license plates) when we took our road trips on the motorways during those years.
These used to be everywhere in France in the ’80s, though many had Talbot badges. Pretty brittle cars, after a few years — by the late ’90s, they were all but gone. I’d never seen the Barreiros version. The Horizon was the real hit for Simca/Talbot in Spain. This one was too big and lacked the Latin-country-preferred notchback design, which eventually came in 1980 as the Talbot Solara.
Here’s a Chrysler (or Talbot) 150 on the getaway in Barcelona in Perros Callejeros. I think this car was European Car of the Year for 1976. I liked the rearward slanted grille and large headlamps on these cars. Another car I’ve always wanted to ride in since first seeing them on a trip to Spain in 1982.
Amazing!
A relative of mine had one, An orange one branded as a Chrsyler Alpine. Quite comfy and well appointed inside with velour trim. This was around ’78.
For 1980, the Alpine was given an anonymous-looking new front end to replace the forward-leaning nose. It also spawned the bland-looking Solara (so this is where Toyota got the name from) notchback sedan.
The original definitely looked better. But the market ‘wanted’ a more aerodynamic look, even though most owners wouldn’t be looking at doing top speed runs.
Didn’t help much however nifty the design and innovate ideas was, when by age 5, most all of them were severely rusted through.
Thankfully I managed to talk my dad out of buying a used one of these.
He said it was “great, drove well, and comfortable. Only thing was the rust through…”
The used car sharks wanted between 1/2 and 2/3 of a brand new Mazda 323 sedan,which he fortunately ended up with instead of one of these wrecks.
In 1976 I went to Scotland with my mother and brother. We spent one week touring the north and I was the driver, as I was the only one not intimidated by driving on the left. I was expecting to get an Austin Princess, but they gave us a Chrysler Alpine. I was completely unaware of the model, but I did enjoy driving it that week.
Chrysler Europe was in about a parlous a state as BL at the time.
The car was a tidy rebody of a Simca 1100 with a wheelbase stretch. The engines & gearboxes weren’t really strong enough to cope and they took the ‘lightweight’ thing a bit too far, hence the tinworm & noise.
They intended to put in the Hillman Avenger’s long-lived engines, but didn’t have the money for that and a new transmission.
The US Horizon (a SWB 1100!) ended up closer to what they originally intended, but our Horizon was more of the same.
They never fully eliminated that horrid timing chain rattle…
A very pretty looking car which fortunately we avoided in Australia, as ‘our’ Chrysler was assembling Mitsubishis instead.
Pretty car, also called Talbot 1510 in Europe. Good design and very reliable.