Last post, I went on about how my family’s 1961 Plymouth Suburban defined “car” for me as a toddler. While I stand by that assessment – based largely on recollections of how impressive the Plymouth’s design was for a child just beginning to define what an automobile was – it’s now time to turn to another car that was elemental to what would eventually inform my own vehicular choices.
Some has been written here on CC about Simcas, but much of that by necessity focused on Simcas in their more or less native European environment. As the astute CC reader knows, these little French cars did officially make it over to the U.S. via Simca’s alliance with Chrysler. First in the late 1950s, and again in the mid-1960s, Chrysler brought over the Simca in an ultimately fruitless attempt to break VW’s dominance of the small car market. One of these, a 1964 1000, wound up for 10 years alongside of my family’s relatively giant Plymouth station wagon. Documentation is sparse, but we may have set some sort of record for length of Simca 1000 ownership on the East Coast.
The Simca likely came into our lives via exposure at a Baltimore Chrysler-Plymouth dealer on one of my dad’s visits to seek out Plymouth repair. When he was desperate enough, he would resort to taking that car to the dealer. The transmission problems that eventually killed it usually qualified as something that would make him “desperate enough”.
I do know that it came from Penn Brothers Plymouth (which I can find virtually nothing about online) as I vividly recall the gigantic dealer badge below the left tail light. That badge – and you can just make it out in the initial picture – seemed particularly large since it was obviously created to be placed on a much larger car butt than that offered by the Simca. But no doubt “Penn Bros” was not going to make a smaller badge to fit a smaller car, so the big one would have to do. This sort of thinking, we shall see, effected much about how Simcas fit within the American dealer universe.
Data shows that the 1000 had a wheelbase of just over 87” with a total length of 149.5”. It was 58.5” inches wide. That made it 32% shorter and 27% narrower than the 61 Plymouth Wagon. And given that the Plymouth wasn’t even necessarily a giant car by standards of the day (the wagon was only 4” longer than the regular full size Plymouth), it’s obvious that the Simca was clearly a very little car. In fact, that’s what my family called it. The “Little Car”. This was contrasted with the “Big Car”, which was the name for the Plymouth. No wasting of brain cycles on excess imagination in my family.
The Simca wasn’t just small compared to full-sized American cars, but it was actually smaller than the Beetle that was its primary competition. Shorter and narrower than the Beetle, it must have looked tiny compared to most anything that one would commonly see on the road. Less obvious was that the Simca also less a bit less expensive than the Beetle. But I’m pretty sure that what sold my parents the most on the Simca was that it had 4 doors. Speak nowadays to nearly anyone who grew up riding in the rear seat of a 1960s VW Bug and it won’t be long before you surface memories of what we used to call “car sickness”. Memories of doing more of a trip than a run down to the store are generally censored and may induce PTSD.
On the other hand, doesn’t that 1000 look roomy?
It would appear that the folks in the second shot have opted to travel door-free. That wasn’t legal in Baltimore.
Even if it had been legal, this brings up another aspect of owning a Simca in 1964 America, and that has to do with the Metric System. We didn’t have the proper wrenches to take off the bolts that were holding the doors. I’m only being a bit facetious – we had no plans that I know of to remove the Simca’s doors. Nevertheless, outside of “import mechanics” and/or dealers that specifically sold import cars, the average auto mechanic in the U.S. in the mid-1960s had only Imperial-sized tools. This was something that perhaps did not occur to people who bought Metric-standard cars from their local Plymouth dealer. I am sure that at the time it did not occur to my parents.
Presumably the place that sold you your car would have the tools necessary to work on it…right? Well, maybe not. But even if the dealer was all set, where you actually took your car for service almost certainly was not. Living those years in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina it just wasn’t a sure thing that the average gas station mechanic would have tools appropriately sized to perform even the most basic operations such as an oil change on what was commonly referred to as a “foreign car”.
In the case of the Simca, while it had a pretty outstanding warranty (5 years, 50,000 miles, quite generous by the standards of the day) the fine print disclosed a problem
They don’t call it the “fine print” for nothing.
The owner had to hold up their end of the bargain by regularly servicing the car via oil changes and lubrication services as well as changing what we might now consider simple supplies (e.g., air, oil, and fuel filters). The success of warranty claims would depend upon being able to successfully provide proof of proper maintenance. And there’s the rub. Once we got away from the purchasing dealer, it was increasingly difficult for my parents to find anyone to service the car. They didn’t know of any “import mechanics” (and likely would have been fearful of being ripped off by having to go to a “special” garage). The number of Plymouth dealers that chose to carry Simca – and presumably therefore have properly trained mechanics, Metric tools, and ready access to Simca parts – was not tremendous. I am sure that my parents were not the only Simca owners who experienced this situation.
Ownership problems were exacerbated by damage that my parents unwittingly inflicted upon the Simca by taking it to their normal sources of auto repair…that is, whatever local gas station was convenient. In the prehistoric days before Jiffy Lube, the local gas station was where most cars were serviced…a story told by the once-ubiquitous doorjamb stickers that nearly every car had.
My family’s Simca made visits to gas stations for its every-3-months or 4000 mile oil changes, but sadly early on in ownership one of those friendly gas station mechanics decided to attack the car with Imperial tools. A rounded off oil drain plug (that was thereafter difficult to fully tighten) and several other damaged parts meant that the car constantly leaked oil and had a variety of other maladies which were almost all related to maintenance parts. Once we moved away from Baltimore to rural Virginia there was simply no way to get the car properly serviced. Hence it limped on ever downhill until its ultimate demise at about the age of 10 (that will be another COAL chapter).
Surely some of these problems were due to my parents’ “thriftiness” (recall the car top carrier from last week). Even in those days, import mechanics did exist, particularly in the college towns (Roanoke, Raleigh) where we usually wound up. Nevertheless “foreign car specialists” were still rare and most of those college-professor-owned VWs and Volvos were serviced at dealers. The success of VW and Volvo is in no small part due to the establishment of a relatively robust dealer network. Robust at least on both coasts and in cities. No such luck for Simca which was brought over the pond as a poor step-child by what turned out to be an indifferent parent company which had plenty of quality control and dealer network problems of its own. It’s sad – to me – that these neat little cars so quickly passed from the U.S. automotive scene. Never terribly common, for all of the reasons discussed, they simply vanished by the mid-70s. I probably haven’t seen one in-person for 30 years, and I believe that one was in a junkyard.
Before closing the book on my family’s 1964 1000, I have to note that it also helped set the stage for other important parts of my adult love of cars. I never drove the Simca (I was still in elementary school when it left the family), but even as a pre-driver it impressed me for its ability to carry all four of us in relative comfort. We seldom took it on the heroic length trips that were the job of the Suburban, but day trips a couple of hundred miles out into the surrounding area were common (as the pictures above from the Shenandoah Parkway and Maryland’s Eastern Shore demonstrate).
While I loved the excess of the Plymouth, the Simca demonstrated that you could still get places, in comfort, with stuff (the family’s full set of blue SAMSONITE hard suitcases fit in the Simca’s front trunk). As I grew older, I became increasingly aware of how the smaller car offered advantages such as ease of parking and efficiency of operation. The former demonstrated when we made regular trips into DC (once I discovered dinosaurs at the Smithsonian, that became a nearly weekly go-to destination). While we’d spend an hour driving around mall (in the DC humidity, suffering the nylon-viscose) looking for a space to park the Plymouth, there was nearly always some off-sized half space to parallel park the Simca right in front of a museum. Having the right-sized car for the job could save a lot of sweat and energy. The part about efficiency of operation was demonstrated when my Dad chose the Simca to commute between Baltimore and our new home in Roanoke for 6 months.
The realization that good things came in different-sized packages – and sometimes smaller packages were better – became clearer and clearer as I inched closer to choosing my own cars to drive. At the same time, the concept of Big Car and Little Car was firmly implanted in my brain. The story of the next Big Car (glimpsed above) – and my finally starting to drive some of these things – will be next week.
Did French mechanics round off bolts on imported American cars?.
Presumably the owners of those cars took them to the dealer or a specialist. Economy cars they were not.
I’m thinking some Renault specialists named Pierre might have sprouted up here and there by now. Seriously, when I had a Renault 16 the only specialist in the Bay Area I found was named Pierre.
But by then all the Dauphines that were all over the place had lived out their very short lifespan by then. Given the reputation they earned I’m sure far fewer R8 and R10’s were sold and very few 16’s.
I am a fan of the “big car-little car” duo. Or at least of having two cars that are uniquely good at two different things. My neighbors across the street have two midsize Nissan SUVs that are identical other than that one may be a little newer than the other. That car ownership philosophy has never made sense to me. But maybe it does to them.
Growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I can recall precisely, exactly one Simca in my youth – and that was one of the FWD versions they offered here in around 1971. When I mentioned it to my mother, she remembered knowing someone who had owned one in the late 50s. That was the sum total of Simca in my life.
Wow, that fine print in the warranty is really something. The lawyer in me is kind of in awe. The consumer in me is outraged, but there was a lot more freedom in what a warranty would or would not cover back then. Of course, the warranty in the owners manual for my 59 Plymouth had been 90 days or 3000 miles, so I suppose anything over that was a bonus back at that time.
Similar warranties were very common in Europe until the EU (sort of) outlawed them.
Valvoline and Jiffylube don’t exist in the UK, and I’d bet less than 10% of people are changing their oil as regularly as every 5000 miles. Beater drivers typically get a basic “service” annually with their MOT test, and drivers of new cars go in religiously and have the service book stamped. My dad had a Peugeot 206 with 2yr/20,000 mile intervals. I told him he should change the oil more frequently so he took it to Kwik Fit every 10k. Most people probably only changed the oil every couple of years. He would have if I hadn’t told him. In the olden days (1980s/90s) you had a minor service at 6000/6months and a major at 12. Standalone oil changes were rare. If the book wasn’t fully stamped on time by a franchise dealer, no warranty. If Simca were demanding monthly grease jobs or something then that obviously is more onerous.
The EU ruled that so long as the manufacturers’ recommendations were followed, you could have it serviced anywhere, so now independent shops will advertise different levels of service with the more expensive one being “warranty service” meaning they not only stamp the book but give you a receipt which says they followed the script for that particular model to the letter.
That FWD Simca would have been one of these:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/un-curbside-classic-simca-1204-1971-small-car-comparison-no-2/
Yes, the fine print in Mopar’s 5/50 warranty of the time was something I alluded to in a recent post. This was obviously before the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act in the US. Particularly onerous was the requirement for the car’s owner to take evidence of outside service to the dealer every 6 months and have “him” certify this.
I can imagine that the difficulties of keeping a low-volume “foreign car” (one that’s not a true exotic) on the roads in Indiana in the 1970s would have been daunting. Even worse than our Simca issues on the mostly cosmopolitan mid-Atlantic East Coast.
I looked up the Wye Oak and although it lasted longer than the Simca it too is gone.
I think my parents rented a Simca 1000 during a trip to Holland in the early 70’s, but I don’t ever recall seeing one in North America. Your parents were unwittingly quite brave to take that on, and did a great job keeping it going for 10 years.
Our family did the big car / little car thing growing up, and we still do it today with our Caravan and Focus. 🙂
My country doctor grandfather traded in his beetle for a red Simca identical to this one. It served him well for years making house calls, especially during the icy winter month. And his Scottish temperament appreciated the fuel economy. His biggest mistake? Trading it in for a Vega.
IIRC the 1000 had a centrifugal oil filter. You removed the element, washed off the gunk, and replaced the element. Of course you’d have needed metric tools to remove and replace the cover.
In August 1965 Consumer Reports tested the 1000 against the Saab 96 two-stroke and the Datsun 411. Their take on the 1000:
“The Simca 1000 is a very handy second or third car, with its four easy-to-enter doors, very light steering, excellent vision, quick-to-warm-up heater and defroster, peppy feel, easy-to-operate brakes, and small turning circle. On the highway, Simca still feels peppy, handles without much rear-engine oversteer, and is fairly quiet, but it shies badly in cross winds and, on secondary roads, rides with quick, sharp motions that are uncomfortable.”
Another great story — thanks for this.
To fill in some information on Penn Brothers, it was a long-time dealership on Reisterstown Rd. in Baltimore City. Brothers Sol and Joseph Penn had owned a repair garage in Baltimore in the 1920s, and branched out to selling new cars in the 1930s – first Oaklands, and then they obtained a Plymouth/DeSoto franchise shortly thereafter. They stayed in business until the mid 1970s.
Joseph Penn’s son, Stanley Penn, worked for the family dealership initially, but then bought out an existing Baltimore Pontiac dealership, which eventually became Penn Pontiac/GMC/Subaru. The Penn family retained ownership of that business until 2007.
My wife’s family had one of these as their only car—two adults and four small children! It must have looked like a clown car when everyone got out at the local Stuckey’s. It was followed, more logically, by a full size Chevy wagon, once the Simca gave up the ghost after a few years.
As to the imperial/metric tool issue, my first car was a Toyota and my Dad had no metric tools. So as i bought my tools, one at a time, as impoverished high school and college students do, they were all metric. When I finally traded for my Mustang, and by then being on my own and not able to dip into Dad’s tool box, I had to start all over collecting another set of tools. Those early tools were Pep Boys specials, no expensive Craftsman’s on my thin budget.
Once I moved fully out of my parents’ house and no longer had access to the relatively meager set of my dad’s tools…all imperial…I started my own tool collection by buying only metric tools. That worked fine for me until a couple of years ago when a mid-70s Volvo found its way into the garage and I discovered that early 240-series Volvos used a mix of bolt sizes. The ever-practical Swedes used an imperial-sized bolt for the oil pan drain and imperial-sized lug nuts. My first oil change required a trip to the hardware store for a 1″ socket as my 25mm one wasn’t quite working on a somewhat rounded 40 year old sump plug
I inherited my dad’s imperial tools and then started buying metric when I got my first metric car. My dad did a lot of work on cars in his younger days, but he only had a set of half inch sockets and small sets of box and open end wrenches. They were snap-on and gray brands. Were cars easier to work on in the 30s and 40s? In my metric tools I have 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2 inch drive, deep and regular sockets and 6 and 12 point and I seem to use most of them. How did my dad manage with so few tools. Probably had no choice because it was the depression.
Love the “upset the apple cart” ad with the rear wheels of the Simca shown tucked in!
And the testimonial ad with the former VW owners, ” Simca’s heater-which really heats-is a godsend…”
But as a small 4 door car it certainly does look to be one of the roomiest.
All in all, I like the looks of the little bugger.
Our first Simca 1000 COAL, a milestone at CC!
These were cute little cars, and although not common, they weren’t all that rare either in the greater Baltimore area, which seems to have been fairly receptive to imports starting in the 1950s import boom.
I’m almost a bit surprised my father didn’t get one instead of his ’65 Kadett, given that he had converted to being a Chrysler man.
Perhaps our geo-locations being similar ( I lived in DC, then the DC burbs, then the Balto.burbs, now the Roanoke area) led to similar “foreign” car experiences. As a high schooler, (late 50s, early 60s) three of my close friend’s families owned one. John’s dad had an Opel Rekord? wagon, Jack’s dad a Peugeot 505? sedan, & Bill’s dad a Fiat 500. All had a “big” car for those long runs to Ocean City. After the usual “Gotta’ have a V8” fever of typical teen/twenty somethings of the day, an Uncle Sam tour of Germany set me straight with the usual GI well used VW experience, then a Fiat 850, then, back stateside a Fiat 124 coupe, & then an Opel 1900 (Manta). I’ve thrown in a few used ‘Merican cars along the way, but always kept a gas-sipper in reserve. Currently, it’s a ’01 Miata.
I’ve always had a love for French cars. The first car ever drove (1962, at age 12) was a couple of year old Renault Dauphine automatic which definitely skewed forever my idea of what cars should be. The smaller, the better.
Unfortunately, the Dauphine was a rustbucket not terribly suited for American conditions. In the Fifties it was second only to the VW Beetle in sales in the US, and outsold Volkswagen in Johnstown, PA because the franchise was taken on by the very prosperous Pristow’s Oldsmobile, who took the car very seriously and provided parts and support commensurate with what their Oldsmobile customers expected. (I often wonder how they managed to get a second brand in a GM dealership, as that was very uncommon back then, and they were the only multi-brand dealership in the area.)
The big failure of the French in importing cars was in not following VW’s lead and being an absolute dictator in what the dealership was allowed to do. Volkswagen, back then, had two advantages over the foreign competition: They had a car that would hold up at Interstate speeds, nobody else in that price class did. And, if you took on the VW franchise, you absolutely did not do it on the cheap. Ever.
That latter point was the ‘killer app’ of the whole deal. If you bought a Volkswagen, you knew you were supported. Completely. From what I’ve read, Volvo (never saw a dealership for those until I went away to college) followed the same path. Every other marque was willing to cut corners in establishing dealerships.
Of all those Fifties imports, which ones are still sold in the US today? Volkswagen, Volvo and Mercedes.
The guy who termed the heater a godsend–did he know that he needed to crack a vent window in the bug to get it to make heat?
This would have been decades after the “trade your VW for a Simca” ad ran, but VW once ran an ad featuring people who’d traded VWs for other cars, then returned to the VW fold. One owner said, “I left for looks, and looks were all it had. I was stranded three times in my first month.” I couldn’t help thinking she must have had a Fiat.
This also reminds me of the Renault ads with headlines like “the Renault for people who swore they would never buy another one” and “It’s not German–how good could it be?”
I have a distant memory of a print ad for the Simca 1000. It went something like, “The Simca doesn’t have a big V8 engine or lots of chrome, but a more meaningful way to demonstrate your masculinity … fully reclining front bucket seats”. Anyone remember this ad? Spent some time searching, couldn’t find it.
You’re probably remembering this ad for the Renault 8:
Yes! Thank you. Great ad, unthinkable today.
Another great article. Although I didn’t move to the DC area until 1979 (and then Charlottesville, VA in 1992), the Wye Oak and Shenandoah Park are very familiar to me. Too bad about the former, which was felled by a big storm some years back, but there is a seeding on the property which has the potential to become a mighty oak in future centuries.
Our local Simca dealer lived over our back fence they were fairly common cars back then and these little rear engine cars were everywhere, now they have become rare
One of my old workmates (named Pierre of course) bought a Simca like this one and loves it .
-Nate
Mechanics back then could make do w/o metric tools for normal maintenance. 10mm has no equivalent and 5/8″ is an iffy substitute for 15mm, but every size up from 11mm to 19mm has a decent SAE fit. That said, rounding off an oil drain bolt is inexcusable for a professional.
Good article. I would have loved that Simca when I was an early adolescent.
Wow, what a great story!!
My family also had a dark blue 1964 Simca 1000 when I was five.
Dad bought it from the factory in Poissy for Mum when he was stationed in Frankfurt.
It was a French spec car and she drove it for years, in Germany, then Fort Belvoir, VA, North Billerica, MA and finally McLean, VA.
It was our little car, paired with our big ’58 Chevy.
She absolutely loved that she could drive in any weather (and, of course, in heals!). She hated the useless Chrysler dealers but got acceptable service at Sears and Midas Muffler.
She (and we) have great stories and memories of that car! Sometimes she would have a loaner car, I remember an Austin America (that she said was too low) and a Beetle (“I don’t like the Kraut cars!).
I now have this ’65 1000, and a very rare ’69 1118 (the name used one year only, in the US only, to match up with the new 1204).
I love finding “oddball” Simca friends!
Salut!
Indeed, Simca friends 🙂
And I’m quite familar with North Billerica and McLean.
You point out one of my mom’s reasons for loving the Simca…that she could drive it in “any weather”. I think that this points to the fact that back then, a car that actually had traction over the driving wheels was a novelty. Many drivers (Americans in particular) had just never experienced such a thing before.
The past is a foreign country.
You ain’t kidding Jeff ;
So many want to know where I learned all my arcane knowledge .
From older people when I was young , where else ? .
-Nate
Jeff, I really enjoyed your story! As is usual, whenever I am researching details on various auto makes in the 1960s and 1970s, I invariably end up at CC. The best stories are the ones that are fond rembemberance of family transportation, and unique vehicles. This is certainly both! I was pretty certain SIMCA was sold in the US in the1960s, but couldn’t recall specific years. What makes this story even better is the true reason for the car’s demise and lack of success in the US auto market. And hah, yes, I’d be loving a SIMCA for use to park somewhere along the Mall. I had a small Civic, and in the 2000s when I went into DC, I’d still park in Georgetown and walk to the Mall having no confidence in finding a spot. Thanks for sharing these priceless memories!
Thank you, Philip.
You make a good connection between the Simca 1000 and the Civic (CVCC), at least in terms of those at the time who were willing to buck the trends and “Think Different” (to borrow another advertising phrase from yet another era). Back then, I would never have thought of my parents as folks who would have fit that category…but indeed, they were.
I was in college in 1967 and my Dad bought me a new Simca at Penn Plymouth in Baltimore. I drove that car back and forth to college on weekends. In two years I managed to put over 50m miles on it and averaged 42 mpg. A dealer in Mt. Joy, Pa. did my oil changes every thousand miles.( I remember it was about $2 for an oil change). I found the seats comfortable and it did drive great in the snow.