Yahoo News UK’s rarest cars: 1971 Simca 1204 Special, the sole survivor on British roads
Debates about what constitutes the first “hot hatchback” are usually as tedious as any edition of I Really Am a Celebrity (Even If My Agent Has Forgotten Me).
However, one vehicle is too often overlooked, as the Simca 1204 Special offered three or five doors, front-wheel-drive and a transverse engine with dual twin-choke Weber carburettors.
Simca also implied “memories of your favourite sports car will come flooding back” on gripping the simulated wood steering wheel.
Initially called Project 928, this model was Simca’s response to the likes of the Citroën Ami, as well as bridging the gap between its rear-engined 1000 and the medium-sized 1300/1500. Chrysler, the firm’s parent company, approved the design in 1964 and three years later the 1100 was unveiled to the press.
The motoring writer Charles Bulmer believed it possessed “the best combination of ride, roadholding, handling and steering of any small-medium car I had met”. Bill Boddy of Motor Sport similarly thought the 1100 “a great little car”, and in June of 1970 Simca enhanced the range with the “hot new” 1204 Special.
“As a family man, do you still long for that frog-eyed Sprite, that Alpine, that MG? Yearn no more,” urged the brochure. Proud owners could also boast of the “crisp Porsche licence gearbox” and “quartz halogen auxiliary driving lamps” to any envious Ford Escort GT driver.
By 1971 all Chrysler UK dealers sold the full Simca range, and at £1,038.90 the 1204 was a very appealing proposition. It had had more in the way of standard fittings than the Austin 1300GT, plus a hatchback rear door was more compact than a Renault 16TS and looked slightly more dynamic than an Austin Maxi 1750.
It also featured a splendidly unergonomic dashboard, with switches and dials apparently inserted at random. The original colour choice was restricted to metallic turquoise, which further highlighted the Special in a typical high street full of brown Hillman Hunters.
The 1100 became France’s best-selling car in 1971 and although the 1978 Horizon was its intended replacement the last of more than two million examples did not leave the factory at Poissy, alongside the Seine to the north-west of Paris, until 1981.
British sales ended two years earlier, and SOS 91J is believed to be the only Special on the road. Its owner Des Cooke observes “people remember them as good cars that rusted badly”. He acquired the Simca from France in December 2013 “where it had been exported and registered in 1976”.
Cooke finds much to praise about the 1204, from “those seats and the soft suspension” to its road manners. “The Simca handles very well if you can accept a lot of body roll and the brakes are great as it has a large servo,” he says.
“Performance is good for a 1970 1200 with 75bhp, but you have to rev it, and it can feel a little coarse. It will do the quoted manufacturer figure of 95mph and cruise happily at 70 all day.”
As for public reaction, “a lot of retired mechanics seem to recall them because they were quite quick for the time”.
Not all responses are positive, however. Cooke says: “An old boy wanted to talk to me at a show, and his first words were ‘These cars were all rubbish’. He took offence when I didn’t agree.”
It was an unwarranted attack on a Simca that, according to the advertisements, satisfied a motorist’s “instincts for power”. And one that was described by Richard Bremner in Car magazine of June 1993 as “the first hot hatch”.
With thanks to Des Cooke and the Simca Club UK: http://www.simcatalbotclub.org/ukclub.htm
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