Remembering the Simca

Another wall sign, this one in the town of Mennetou-sur-Cher, about 25 miles east of Saint-Aignan, on the river. It advertises Simca automobiles and a garage/dealer in the nearby town of Romorantin-Lanthenay. Simcas are no longer made, and the garage is surely just a local memory.

Wall-advertising in Mennetou-sur-Cher, along the Nationale 76

Personally, I have a long history with Simcas, even though I don't think I've ever driven one. I don't even know if I've ever been a passenger in one. Production of the cars ceased in late 1970s or early 1980s, so this Simca-fascination of mine goes back quite some time.

In 1972-73, I lived in the city of Rouen in Normandy and worked as an English-language teaching assistant in a high school there. The job was part-time and the pay was low, so I didn't have a car that year. I also didn't need a car because I lived in the middle of the old city and could walk to work and to nearby shopping areas.

It was just as well, because I couldn't have afforded a car. I had sold my 1966 Ford Fairlane (I shudder to think I drove such a thing — it was a college graduation present from my father). when I left the States that summer of 1972.

I really wanted my next car in America to be a Simca 1100 hatchback.

I was fascinated with French cars and European cars in general. They seemed so much more sensible to me than the big "boats" so many Americans drove around in at the time. The Citroën 2CV (la Deux-Chevaux) and the Renault 4L were two of the most distinctive small cars in France back then. There were plenty of other models, too, but those two were really the people's cars of the time. You still see quite a few of each on the roads out here in the countryside.

And there was also the Simca 1100. It was an innovative model because it was one of the first hatchback cars, unless I'm mistaken. The 2CV was a four-dour sedan, and the 4L was a tiny station wagon. The hatchback was a new concept in those days. Hatchback models are still very popular in Europe, though they are kind out of fashion in the U.S. My little Peugeot 206, which is a 2001 model, is a hatchback. It's very practical.

A 1961 Simca Aronde. The Aronde was introduced in the early 1950s.
This is the Simca model I remember seeing in North Carolina back then.
Thanks to Wikipedia for the photo.

Simca had some very successful cars in France in the 1950s, and I even remember that somebody in my home town in North Carolina had one in the late '50s or early '60s. At that time, there were still U.S. military bases in France, and I'm sure it was some of the returning military personnel who brought their European cars home with them. We learned to recognize Simcas and Renault Dauphines, as well as English Fords, Hillmans, and Vauxhalls, a few Fiats, and, of course, VW Beetles.

The Simca 1100 was a new model in 1967. It had front-wheel drive and independent suspension all-around. In addition to the hatchback, there was a station wagon. In all, about 2.2 million Simca 1100s were built.

A Simca 1100 station wagon that is currently for sale

Anyway, I really wanted a Simca. Chrysler had taken a controlling interest in the Simca company in the 1960s, and owned it outright by the early 1970s. Chrysler France kept the Simca brand name. I hoped that when I returned to the U.S. from Normandy in 1973 I would be able to buy myself a Simca 1100 from a Chrysler dealer. I was going to need a car in the U.S.

This one is a Simca 1100 utility vehicle. It's for sale too.

That wasn't to be, however. Chrysler didn't sell them in the U.S. I ended up buying a little German Opel 1900 from a Buick dealer in North Carolina. My father co-signed the loan for me, and the Buick dealer was where he bought his cars. He was scandalized that I would pay good money for such a little putt-putt car.

A close-up of the old Simca sign

The brand-new light-blue Opel 1900 (called an Opel Ascona in Europe), with an AM radio, a heater, and a manual transmission, cost about $3,300. Such a deal! It didn't have air conditioning, FM radio, electric windows, or even power steering or power brakes. But it had four doors and a big trunk. It got good gas mileage. It was the best I could do.

I know I have a picture of that old Opel somewhere. I drove it until 1979, when I sold it to return to France one more time. The Opel got me back and forth from North Carolina to Lakeland, Florida, and Champaign, Illinois, many times. I don't remember how many miles I put on it, but I bet it was a lot. I think I sold it for $600 in August 1979.

So no Simca for me... not back then. The only Simca 1100 I've noticed since I've been in France this time is an orange one that I spotted last year down in Châtillon-sur-Indre. I was surprised to see one that was still, apparently, road-worthy.

The Simca wall-advertising I started this posting with led me to start looking around on the Web to see if there were any available. It turns out that there are a lot of classic Simca 1100 pictures on this site, and more at this one. Wikipedia has a good history of the brand (in English or in French).

Another 1100 currently for sale (unless it's already been sold)

And if you want to buy a Simca 1100 today, there are plenty of ads here. All the pictures of 1100s in this posting are ones I got from these ads (can't imagine anybody minding some free advertising).

This is the Simca 1100 station wagon that a man in Blois is trying
to sell. Sometimes we think having a second car would come in handy,
especially a station wagon. The guy wants 1200 euros for this one.

But... but... now I've learned that one is for sale in Blois. What is the attraction of these old cars? I'm very tempted to call the man who's selling it. I'm old enough to know better. I wonder if the thing would even make the 25-mile trip from Blois to Saint-Aignan without incident.

If I knew anything about working on car motors, having a classic car would make more sense. To be continued...

Thoughts for today

Instant analysis of President Bush's speech outlining a new "strategy" for Iraq:

Hey it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is chez Saddam.

And it's five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates,
Ain't got time to wonder why, whoopee! we're all goin' to die.

I recite this from memory. As you might realize, it is not original. Cheryl's comment on my last wall-signs topic — sign, sign, everywhere a sign, blocking out the scenery breaking my mind — brought it back to my broken mind.

Explain to me again what the difference is between a surge and an escalation...

* * * * *

The first and only black mayor of my home town in North Carolina died a couple of days ago at 83. He was elected mayor of Morehead City in 1993. According to the local newspaper, William Horton "ran on a platform of paving dirt streets in the black section of Morehead City."

It is incredible that there was and still is a "black section" in that town. And it is outrageous that the people who lived in that part of town had to live with dirt streets until the mid-1990s. Were all the streets in all other parts of town, even in poor white neighborhoods, paved? Yes, of course.

Such is life in the U.S. South, much as it pains me to say it.

* * * * *

Yesterday, we drove over to Tours to do some shopping chez Leroy-Merlin, which is a kind of Home Depot store here in France. We didn't actually go into the old city of Tours. All the stores where we shopped — Leroy-Merlin, a couple of garden centers, the Darty home-appliance/electronics store, and the Géant and Leclerc superstores (hypermarchés in French) — are on the periphery of the city. Everybody drives there and parks in big parking lots, just like in America.

The drivers were kind of out of control, I thought. Fact is that yesterday was the first day of the semi-annual sales — les soldes — in France, which is a pretty big deal. So a lot of people were out, and the pace was frenetic.

But what I realized is that our view of the frenetic pace and the crazy drivers is tinted by our having lived in the country for the past 3½ years. When we were near the Géant store/mall, we stopped at a red light at a big intersection. There were two lanes of at least 15 cars waiting to go through on the road perpendicular to the one we were on. "Look at all that traffic!" we both exclaimed. "How do people live like this?"

I saw a young woman wheeling around a traffic circle with a cell phone stuck to her ear. That's against the law in France, and she was driving like a bat out of hell. We parked at one store and walked a short block over to another store (nobody else was out walking, of course). As we crossed the entrance to a parking lot on foot, a young man driving a VW Golf came roaring in. I thought that he was aiming his car at me and that I was going to be run over. He was obviously late for something, and lost in the maze of streets and parking lots. He had that frustrated, wild-eyed look. It was hair-raising.

Whew! Life in the big city. You can have it!

Café, restaurant signs

Here are two more signs in my series on wall advertising, les murs-réclames.

These are both in the village called Montrésor, which I've written about several times. This one is pretty recent. Montrésor has the distinction of being L'un des plus beaux villages de France — one of France's most beautiful villages.

These wall signs are a little different from the others I've posted, since they advertise an eating and drinking establishment that is just around the corner. The sign just above says Restaurant de la Liberté (the word is truncated). I can't read the last word, the one in script. Can you?

Accented characters: resolution?

Thanks to some friends who have given me feedback in both blog comments and e-mails, I've learned that the one browser that doesn't display the French accented characters in my blog is Safari on the Macintosh.

I can enter the accents as HTML codes in my text, but I'm not inclined to do so. Typing them the way I do is easy and quick. Writing the blog is not a professional enterprise. I'm not selling anything.

I can also quit using the French accented characters. Ha! No way, José.

If you are using the Safari browser on a Mac, here's a work-around (as they say in the software business): use Firefox instead. Firefox is a free download here. Choose the language you want and the operating system you use (Mac, in this case). I've been using Firefox on Windows for a while now, and I like it.

Want to see what the HTML codes for accented characters look like? Here's the code for an e with an accute accent: & # 2 3 3 ; I would have to type that without the spaces between the characters for you to see this character: é. So the word café would look like this in my text, without the spaces between the characters: c a f & # 2 3 3 ;. That would make proofreading impossible.

Maybe there's a side of this I haven't figured out yet. I have to deal with the Blogger editing application too. For now, I'm not going to change anything.