COAL: Simca 1204 – Stranger in a Strange Land

By
– Posted on September 22, 2022

(Welcome our new mid-week COAL series and writer, Steven Vettura)

This tale begins on the steps of My Old School (apologies to Steely Dan) in Montpelier, Idaho sometime in the halcyon mid ’60’s.  The details are necessarily vague to protect the guilty, but the story goes that a group of thirteen year olds, amused and inexplicably provoked by the principal’s funny foreign car, decided that it would make an attractive display in the school’s main hall.  Somehow, when no one was looking, they picked the car up, hauled it up a steep flight of stairs, and created the first art installation in the history of the school district.  The car in question was a Simca 1000, a literal box on wheels with a very light curb weight.  Any memories of how the car was dis-installed are vague, as are the consequences of the act, but needless to say, the principal was not amused.

I relate this homely story because that little box on twelve inch wheels was my introduction to the Simca marque, which only a few years later would make a lasting impression on my picaresque late teen years.

But first, some necessary background:  my Dad owned a motel.  Given that it was located high in the mountains of southeastern Idaho, a snowplow was required to clear the parking lot from October to May (one old timer had described the local climate as ‘eleven months of winter and one month damn late in the fall’).  The purchase price of the motel had included its own dedicated snowplow, which was an International Scout (a brand lately resurrected by VW?  The mind boggles).  This was an amusing piece of machinery given that the top was removable with a socket wrench, but it proved to be short-lived as my older brother was notoriously hard on machinery and within the first two months had managed to destroy the rear differential.  Post-mortem reports were not promising, as other previously undiagnosed maladies predicted a grim and costly future.  Dad was notoriously careful with money, so a new flip top Scout was out of the question.  Somehow he located a late 40’s-early 50’s Jeep Panel Wagon with very low mileage, a fact explained by its purpose in life:  it had served as a phosphate mine’s ambulance.  Fortunately, accidents at the mine had been historically low so the Jeep seemed to have served chiefly as decoration.

And what a decoration–as delivered, it was a faded white (displaying what is now called ‘patina’) with minimal rust, but its distinguishing exterior detail was the red crosses painted on both sides.  Now, my brother, to go along with his lack of mechanical sympathy, also had a weakness for pushing the boundaries of the local speed limits and thus would have preferred to maintain a low profile, an unlikely possibility if he were to drive an ambulance with red crosses on its side, particularly given that he was already on a first name basis with several members of the county police department.  He solved this particular conundrum by finding a job at the local Safeway, eventually acquiring his own cars on his own dime(s). Logic should have dictated a Simca 1000 as the vehicle best suited to avoid further attention and traffic citations; instead, he acquired first a ’63 Impala SS and then, after scattering vital bits of Chevy engine internals over the Wyoming landscape while driving home from college, a ’66 Pontiac GTO.

That left the high profile Jeep Ambulance to me.  Occasionally, I was pulled over by disappointed cops hoping to nab my brother but otherwise there was relatively little mischief I could get into at the wheel of a twenty-five year old truck with a flathead six (Super Hurricane!) and 105 horsepower . . . although the cavernous rear compartment devoid of seats or any other imaginable creature comforts did present some options, but certainly not romantic ones as throughout its tenure with us both interior and exterior had a lingering and inescapable odor of  . . . phosphate.

Only extant photo of The Ambulance.

 

I soon resigned myself to the fact that I would drive no place unnoticed, but wheels are wheels when you are sixteen.  I quickly learned how to make myself useful by way of my mad snowplow skills, which, together with the fact that no one else in the family wanted to be seen driving an ungainly Jeep ambulance meant that I was pretty much the sole proprietor.  The Willys proved to be rugged and dependable transportation.  In fact, I only recall it stranding me once and that was my own fault for driving through a four foot deep puddle up St. Charles Canyon during a last ditch effort to find skiable snow in late spring.  The distributor was drenched leaving five or six disgruntled skiers no other option than to hike several miles to civilization as everyone else in the county knew better than to go up there in April so there was little chance of any good samaritan passing by.  We went to retrieve the Willys the next day, and it fired right up, so full marks are awarded to Jeep for reliability, with demerits for engine compartment waterproofing.

The Jeep’s other Achilles heel had to be its windshield wipers, which ran off a vacuum line rather than electric motors.  This resulted in the wipers moving slower and slower if you were ascending a steep grade in the middle of a Rocky Mountain snow storm.  Opening the drivers side window in the midst of a driving blizzard to clear the windshield with your hand was a good way to acquire frostbite.

I should have honed my mechanical skills on the Willys, but after all, what was there to break?  In those days trucks were built to last . . . although functional brakes, steering, handling, and wiper functions were much lower on the priority list.  Parts that weren’t cast iron were heavy gauge steel.  It didn’t need a mechanic, it needed a blacksmith.  There may have been a few plastic knobs, but no other flimsy bits.  I’m sure it would have survived a direct hit by any bomb not of the atomic variety.  It certainly met my Dad’s every need, i.e. it was cheap, especially after I taught myself the rudiments of car maintenance (and blacksmithery) so he never had to take it to a mechanic.

Most good things must come to an end, unfortunately, and when my parents moved over the mountains to a larger town just before my senior year of high school it was determined that the Willys’ fifteen miles per gallon could no longer be justified given its snow removal capabilities were no longer required.  An economy car was required to supplement Dad’s Buick LeSabre, which coincidentally, also got fifteen miles per gallon.  Now, I was ostensibly a foreign car aficionado given that I’d been reading the sometimes crazed propaganda of Road & Track since I was twelve.  This meant that any Detroit product was met with derision, but there were also a few counterculture elements mixed into my social perspective and the darling of the Hippie movement at the time was the lowly VW Beetle, that is if a VW Microbus was not available.  Consequently, I lobbied for a Beetle unceasingly for a few weeks, but Dad kept to form and sought out the best deal and the lowest price.  It so happened that he had a pal who owned a Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler dealership.  Coincidentally, in 1971 Chrysler Corporation took a look at its inventory of gas swilling Detroit Iron and formed something resembling a conscience.  Or, more likely some executive noticed that they owned stock in a few overseas ventures that manufactured smaller and more economical motorcars and so without further ado they put a few on cattle boat bound for the USA to see if American consumers could be persuaded to drive something that didn’t require the piloting skills of the skipper of the Edmund Fitzgerald to navigate the American byways.  Eventually, they settled on Mitsubishi to lead the charge, but before sensible heads prevailed they tested the waters with the supremely forgettable Plymouth Cricket (aka as the Hillman Avenger in its home market), various Sunbeams (who could resist a car named ‘Sunbeam’?)  and (ta-da!) the Simca 1204.

I’m sure I’d heard of the Simca 1204 from R&T and Car and Driver, but nothing seems to have registered; I only remembered the Simca 1000 saga, which left not-so-fond memories.  Nevertheless, I followed Dad down to the Chrysler showroom to take a look.  We kicked the tires of the Simca, Dad observing that it was certainly a little tin box, wasn’t it?  I had to admit it was, but I mentioned that it was front wheel drive and should be good in the snow, which might have sold Dad, not that he hadn’t decided to buy it anyway as his friend had intimated that he’d give him a killer deal.  As I was sixteen or seventeen, I wasn’t privy to the actual negotiations, which was Dad’s raison d’être, after all.  I was left to my own devices, which provided my sole opportunity sit in a ’71 Dodge Challenger (not a Hemi, I noted) and a Charger, which seemed bigger than the family Buick. I regarded them with arrogant suspicion, totally missing the point that if we’d bought either of them instead of the Simca, I could have funded my retirement at a much earlier age–especially if we’d ordered the Hemi . . .

Eventually, Dad emerged unscathed from the sales office with keys in hand and I was chosen to drive the Simca home in the requisite snow storm as it was mostly going to be my car anyway, and Dad wasn’t sure that he could find the clutch down there in the narrow footwell.  (He may have tried to start out in second gear as my Mom did a few days later as the only manuals she had driven in the last thirty years were farm trucks with a compound first.).

Our Paul has already done a piece on the 1204 (link enclosed) that celebrates the many virtues of its groundbreaking engineering.  Suffice to say, along with the low volume Autobianchi Primula, it set the pattern for nearly all that followed, i.e. a transverse engine with gearbox mounted on the side with unequal drive shafts.  A few years later the VW Golf and Fiat 127 and 128 took this idea and ran with it, resulting in near universal adaptation of the FWD model within a couple of decades.  How did it feel to be in on this pioneering event?  It felt fine, and it was certainly painless.  Of all the cars I’ve had I maybe miss the Simca the most, partly because of the memories associated with, partly because it was handy and comfortable and got great gas mileage, not to mention it really was good in the snow, of which there was plenty in Logan, Utah and its surrounding territories.  In retrospect, it may have had the most comfortable seats (being French) of my experience.  The only annoyance I recall is a chattering speedometer, something that no doubt could have been remedied with a little graphite on the cable.  The Simca was my ski car, my weekend transport to see my girlfriend who still lived on the other side of the mountain range, and my coming of age car.  I drove it to Alberta and British Columbia with my friend, Norm, on an extended camping trip, and to the many formative concerts of that golden age.  It wasn’t fast, not with a tiny bored out ohv four borrowed from the lamented Simca 1000.  I actually lost a drag race with Norm’s Datsun B210.  But like a Rolls, its performance was adequate, and it had long-travel torsion bar suspension, which in quintessential French fashion provided great comfort and not bad handling although with the predictable French body roll.

Upon graduating from My (other) Old School, my sister, who had moved to Italy, invited me over for the summer, and so leaving the Simca behind I was off to brighter shores.  We spent the summer traveling the length and breadth of Western Europe in a VW Squareback, from Rome and the Costa Brava in Spain to Oslo, Norway, a trip almost beyond belief for a kid from the mountains of Idaho.  At some point the daughter of my sister’s neighbor (my old flame, as it were) arrived in Milan with a friend in tow.  Somehow, and I’m not even exactly certain how such a thing was allowed to happen, the three of us were given the green light to travel to Paris and London on our own.  I’d been to both cities with my sister and so was considered to be an old hand, I suspect.  Cindy, Laura and I embarked on another fairy tale adventure, three kids on our own in the cultural capitals of the world.  We made the most of it, needless to say.  I still have a photo of Cindy and Laura on the Champs-Élysées under an umbrella and adjacent to a Simca showroom on the right; I was nostalgically thinking of my Simca at home, especially considering that it made the VW Squareback I’d driven thousands of kilometers in a few short months seem positively ancient.

From London I caught an illegal charter flight home and began my college career with a treasure trove of exotic tales to entertain my friends.  The Simca remained my companion for another few months until she was rear-ended by a hapless driver skidding on black ice on our way home from a ski trip.  She remained in the shop for months, despite most of the damage consisting of bent sheetmetal.  Parts arrived on a slow boat from the Poissy factory, apparently.  Eventually, she was made whole but I only drove her for a short time before I returned to Italy, this time for years rather than weeks.  Soon after my departure Dad did another one of his deals with his Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth friend, trading the Simca in on a . . . Dodge pickup truck.  I think I can claim with some confidence that the Jeep Wagon-Simca 1204-Dodge D-100 sales arc was likely a one time phenomenon, never to be repeated.

That may have been an ignominious end to the relationship, but at least I can take consolation in the fact that my Simca was never part of a clandestine middle school art installation.

 

Further reading:

Un-Curbside Classic: Simca 1204 (1100) – 1971 Small Car Comparison No. 2