1969 Simca 1000 Special Sedan, Cité de l'Automobile, Mulhouse, Alsace, France
"The Simca 1000 is a small, rear-engined, four-door saloon which was manufactured by the French automaker Simca from 1961 to 1978.
The origins of the Simca 1000 lie not in France but in Italy. Simca's President-director general, Henri Pigozzi, had been born in Turin and had known Fiat's founder, Giovanni Agnelli, from 1922 until Agnelli's death in 1945: the Agnellis still controlled Fiat. Fiat would remain Simca's dominant share holder until 1963. Pigozzi remained a regular visitor to Fiat's vast Turin operation throughout his time at the head of Simca, and when Pigozzi visited it was as an honoured friend.
Following the launch in 1955 of the well received Fiat 600, Fiat's development department, still headed up by the designer-engineer Dante Giacosa, set about planning for its successor. The replacement foreseen would be a little larger and more powerful than the current car, reflecting growing prosperity in Italy at the time. Two projects were run in parallel: “Project 119” was for a two-door successor, building on the strengths of the current model, while “Project 122” was for a more radically differentiated four door successor. The entrance to the inner sanctum of Fiat's Development Department would have been blocked to most visitors, but Pigozzi's privileged relationship with the Agnellis opened even these doors, and during the late 1950s he took a particular interest in the Department. It became clear that Pigozzi's intentions to extend the Simca range further down in the small car sector aligned closely with Fiat's own “Projects 119” and “122”, intended to build a presence upmarket from the Fiat 600. Pigozzi obtained the agreement of the Fiat directors to select one of the six different rather boxy four-door clay models and mock-ups that then comprised the output of “Project 122” to be developed into Simca's new small car.
The head of the Simca styling department, Mario Revelli de Beaumont, was born in Rome in 1907. He had transferred from General Motors in 1955. Dividing his time between Fiat's Industrial Design Centre at Turin and Simca's Styling Centre at Poissy, Revelli de Beaumont spent the two years between 1959 and 1961 working with Fiat's Felice Mario Boano, developing the Simca 1000 to production readiness. Although the surviving prototypes differ in detail, the basic architecture and boxy shape of the car had evidently been “right first time” and the Simca 1000 of 1961 is entirely recognizable as the model that Pigozzi had selected from Fiat's “Project 122”. In the meantime, in Italy the Fiat 600 continued to sell strongly and there was little sense of urgency about investing to replace it. Management evidently decided that a four-door replacement for the 600 would represent too big a jump from the existing car. However, in 1964 the fruits of “Project 119” became public with the launch of the Fiat 850.
Cité de l'Automobile, Musée national de l’automobile, Collection Schlumpf is an automobile museum located in Mulhouse, France, and built around the Schlumpf Collection of classic automobiles. It has the largest displayed collection of automobiles and contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti motor vehicles in the world.
Brothers Hans and Fritz Schlumpf were Swiss citizens born in Italy, but after their mother Jeanne was widowed, she moved the family to her home town of Mulhouse in Alsace, France. The two brothers, who were later described as having a "Schlumpf obsession", were devoted to their mother.
In 1935 the Schlumpf brothers founded a limited company which focused on producing spun woollen products. By 1940, at the time of the German invasion of France, 34-year-old Fritz was the chairman of a spinning mill in Malmerspach. After World War II, the two brothers devoted their time to obsessively growing their business, and became wealthy.
Mulhouse (pronounced [myluz]; Alsatian: Milhüsa or Milhüse, [mɪlˈyːzə]; German: Mülhausen; meaning mill house) is a subprefecture of the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region of Eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. With a population of 109,443 in 2017 in the commune and 285,121 inhabitants in 2016 in the urban area, it is the largest city in Haut-Rhin and second largest in Alsace after Strasbourg. Mulhouse is the principal commune of the 39 communes which make up the communauté d'agglomération of Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération (m2A, population 272,712).
Mulhouse is famous for its museums, especially the Cité de l'Automobile (also known as the Musée national de l'automobile, 'National Museum of the Automobile') and the Cité du Train (also known as Musée Français du Chemin de Fer, 'French Museum of the Railway'), respectively the largest automobile and railway museums in the world. An industrial town nicknamed "the French Manchester", Mulhouse is also the main seat of the Upper Alsace University, where the secretariat of the European Physical Society is found.
Alsace (/ælˈsæs/, also US: /ælˈseɪs, ˈælsæs/; French: [alzas]; Low Alemannic German/Alsatian: 's Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is a cultural and historical region in Eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2017, it had a population of 1,889,589.
Until 1871, Alsace included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort, which formed its southernmost part. From 1982 to 2016, Alsace was the smallest administrative région in metropolitan France, consisting of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departments. Territorial reform passed by the French Parliament in 2014 resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. Due to protests it was decided in 2019 that Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin would form the future European Collectivity of Alsace in 2021.
Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swabian and Swiss German, although since World War II most Alsatians primarily speak French. Internal and international migration since 1945 has also changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. For more than 300 years, from the Thirty Years' War to World War II, the political status of Alsace was heavily contested between France and various German states in wars and diplomatic conferences. The economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg, which sits right on the contemporary German international border. The city is the seat of several international organisations and bodies." - info from Wikipedia.
During the summer of 2018 I went on my first ever cycling tour. On my own I cycled from Strasbourg, France to Geneva, Switzerland passing through the major cities of Switzerland. In total I cycled 1,185 km over the course of 16 days and took more than 8,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Become a patron to my photography on Patreon.
1969 Simca 1000 Special Sedan, Cité de l'Automobile, Mulhouse, Alsace, France
"The Simca 1000 is a small, rear-engined, four-door saloon which was manufactured by the French automaker Simca from 1961 to 1978.
The origins of the Simca 1000 lie not in France but in Italy. Simca's President-director general, Henri Pigozzi, had been born in Turin and had known Fiat's founder, Giovanni Agnelli, from 1922 until Agnelli's death in 1945: the Agnellis still controlled Fiat. Fiat would remain Simca's dominant share holder until 1963. Pigozzi remained a regular visitor to Fiat's vast Turin operation throughout his time at the head of Simca, and when Pigozzi visited it was as an honoured friend.
Following the launch in 1955 of the well received Fiat 600, Fiat's development department, still headed up by the designer-engineer Dante Giacosa, set about planning for its successor. The replacement foreseen would be a little larger and more powerful than the current car, reflecting growing prosperity in Italy at the time. Two projects were run in parallel: “Project 119” was for a two-door successor, building on the strengths of the current model, while “Project 122” was for a more radically differentiated four door successor. The entrance to the inner sanctum of Fiat's Development Department would have been blocked to most visitors, but Pigozzi's privileged relationship with the Agnellis opened even these doors, and during the late 1950s he took a particular interest in the Department. It became clear that Pigozzi's intentions to extend the Simca range further down in the small car sector aligned closely with Fiat's own “Projects 119” and “122”, intended to build a presence upmarket from the Fiat 600. Pigozzi obtained the agreement of the Fiat directors to select one of the six different rather boxy four-door clay models and mock-ups that then comprised the output of “Project 122” to be developed into Simca's new small car.
The head of the Simca styling department, Mario Revelli de Beaumont, was born in Rome in 1907. He had transferred from General Motors in 1955. Dividing his time between Fiat's Industrial Design Centre at Turin and Simca's Styling Centre at Poissy, Revelli de Beaumont spent the two years between 1959 and 1961 working with Fiat's Felice Mario Boano, developing the Simca 1000 to production readiness. Although the surviving prototypes differ in detail, the basic architecture and boxy shape of the car had evidently been “right first time” and the Simca 1000 of 1961 is entirely recognizable as the model that Pigozzi had selected from Fiat's “Project 122”. In the meantime, in Italy the Fiat 600 continued to sell strongly and there was little sense of urgency about investing to replace it. Management evidently decided that a four-door replacement for the 600 would represent too big a jump from the existing car. However, in 1964 the fruits of “Project 119” became public with the launch of the Fiat 850.
Cité de l'Automobile, Musée national de l’automobile, Collection Schlumpf is an automobile museum located in Mulhouse, France, and built around the Schlumpf Collection of classic automobiles. It has the largest displayed collection of automobiles and contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Bugatti motor vehicles in the world.
Brothers Hans and Fritz Schlumpf were Swiss citizens born in Italy, but after their mother Jeanne was widowed, she moved the family to her home town of Mulhouse in Alsace, France. The two brothers, who were later described as having a "Schlumpf obsession", were devoted to their mother.
In 1935 the Schlumpf brothers founded a limited company which focused on producing spun woollen products. By 1940, at the time of the German invasion of France, 34-year-old Fritz was the chairman of a spinning mill in Malmerspach. After World War II, the two brothers devoted their time to obsessively growing their business, and became wealthy.
Mulhouse (pronounced [myluz]; Alsatian: Milhüsa or Milhüse, [mɪlˈyːzə]; German: Mülhausen; meaning mill house) is a subprefecture of the Haut-Rhin department in the Grand Est region of Eastern France, close to the Swiss and German borders. With a population of 109,443 in 2017 in the commune and 285,121 inhabitants in 2016 in the urban area, it is the largest city in Haut-Rhin and second largest in Alsace after Strasbourg. Mulhouse is the principal commune of the 39 communes which make up the communauté d'agglomération of Mulhouse Alsace Agglomération (m2A, population 272,712).
Mulhouse is famous for its museums, especially the Cité de l'Automobile (also known as the Musée national de l'automobile, 'National Museum of the Automobile') and the Cité du Train (also known as Musée Français du Chemin de Fer, 'French Museum of the Railway'), respectively the largest automobile and railway museums in the world. An industrial town nicknamed "the French Manchester", Mulhouse is also the main seat of the Upper Alsace University, where the secretariat of the European Physical Society is found.
Alsace (/ælˈsæs/, also US: /ælˈseɪs, ˈælsæs/; French: [alzas]; Low Alemannic German/Alsatian: 's Elsàss [ˈɛlsɑs]; German: Elsass [ˈɛlzas]; Latin: Alsatia) is a cultural and historical region in Eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2017, it had a population of 1,889,589.
Until 1871, Alsace included the area now known as the Territoire de Belfort, which formed its southernmost part. From 1982 to 2016, Alsace was the smallest administrative région in metropolitan France, consisting of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin departments. Territorial reform passed by the French Parliament in 2014 resulted in the merger of the Alsace administrative region with Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine to form Grand Est. Due to protests it was decided in 2019 that Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin would form the future European Collectivity of Alsace in 2021.
Alsatian is an Alemannic dialect closely related to Swabian and Swiss German, although since World War II most Alsatians primarily speak French. Internal and international migration since 1945 has also changed the ethnolinguistic composition of Alsace. For more than 300 years, from the Thirty Years' War to World War II, the political status of Alsace was heavily contested between France and various German states in wars and diplomatic conferences. The economic and cultural capital of Alsace, as well as its largest city, is Strasbourg, which sits right on the contemporary German international border. The city is the seat of several international organisations and bodies." - info from Wikipedia.
During the summer of 2018 I went on my first ever cycling tour. On my own I cycled from Strasbourg, France to Geneva, Switzerland passing through the major cities of Switzerland. In total I cycled 1,185 km over the course of 16 days and took more than 8,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Become a patron to my photography on Patreon.