The sluggish uptake on the Royal rang alarm bells within Chrysler Australia. The future of the company was riding on this, and yet sales continued to slide, with their market share hitting a low of 2.8 percent by the end of 1958. The company posted a loss of £145,195 ($5.6 million) for the financial year 1958-'59, and two thousand jobs were axed.
Saddle Up
Those who remained had little choice but to roll up their sleeves and work even harder. As well as the standard Royal sedan, 1958 saw Chrysler add a five-door station wagon to the lineup, which they badged the Plainsman. The wagon was identical to the sedan all the way back to the C-pillar, but from there had a different roof, different side panels at the rear, and an expanded glasshouse. The cargo bay came with a full-width tailgate that doubled as a loading platform, and they wisely made the floor completely flat to make sliding cargo in easier, even with the rear seat folded down (indeed, with the seats flat, cargo space was almost doubled). It was a worthy ploy given the lack of a Customline or Chevrolet wagon, but once again the lack of budget strangled the idea in its cradle. It was visibly just a Royal sedan with an afterthought cargo bay tacked on, so it failed to arrest Chrysler's sales slide, with registrations limited to just over 300. It was even offered with the 313ci V8, but only a pitiful 32 cars were ever so equipped. After a short life in the showrooms, the Plainsman would be dumped in 1959.
Concerned about the Royal's iffy styling and trickle of sales – which were hardly separate topics – it's rumoured that a delegation of Chrysler dealers paid a visit to head office in Adelaide to vent at the brass. The result of this meeting, late in 1958, was the Chrysler Royal AP2 – a styling update and little more. The side trim of the AP1 was dropped in favour of a smaller, less ornate chrome-surrounded spear, with the interior colour matched to the roof and fins. More importantly, the designers also took the time to change the radiator grille: Although it looked simple, the AP1's mesh grille had actually been made of sixty-five separate pieces, painstakingly hand-assembled in a specially-designed jig. Realising what was wrong with the AP1, the new grille disguised the abundance of vertical space by dividing it into three sections, which were then filled in with die-cast trim pieces. Although it looked busier, it was actually much easier and cheaper to produce than the previous grille, and the cheerful jukebox styling made the car much more attractive overall.
Even so, it wasn't the styling at the front that hogged all the attention, but the rear. The AP2's most celebrated feature was a set of so-called "saddle fins", extra fins piggy-backing atop the existing fins. Putting fins on your fins should have been the ultimate 1950s power move, as glorious as it was absurd, but in fact much of the advertising sounded a tad defensive:
Fine, clean looks confirm the promise of deep-down quality. Chrysler Royal styling is based on the use of simple, clean-cut lines. The result is a happy medium between the stolid, ultra-conservative and the grotesquely modernistic. The car is well-dressed in good taste... not overdressed.
The brochure even claimed these items were functional, not cosmetic, acting like an aeroplane rudder to keep you tracking straight and true on the road:
Airfoil rear fenders – a Forward Look styling note with practical application. Slender and high, like stabilizers [sic] on aircraft, they help keep you steady.
Reading between the lines, it seems the saddle fins were controversial even in 1958, and one gets the impression there were bitter debates within the Chrysler offices over whether to include them or get rid of them entirely. The compromise seems to've been making them optional extras, but in the event almost no cars left the factory without them. Go figure.
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| V8-engined Royal AP2 on the main street of Hillston, NSW, c. 1958. Note the '58 Customline behind – very much a, "You vs the guy she tells you not to worry about," situation. (Source: Facebook) |
The choice of six-cylinder PowerFlow and Fury V8 engines continued, with the V8 identified by a V-shaped emblem in the grille and a small "V8" badge on the rear quarter. The AP2 was also made available as a new two-door utility called the Wayfarer (the name taken from the unrelated Dodge Wayfarer), and there's some debate over whether it was available with the V8 or was a six-cylinder proposition only. Despite a carrying capacity of half a tonne, just 1,205 Wayfarers were sold during the AP2's life. In fact, the AP2 still struggled against the Ford Customline and sold even worse than the AP1, with just 4,404 leaving the dealerships in two years.
Bitter Pills
Chrysler Australia responded with an almost manic focus on diversification. They tried adding the Plymouth Belvedere, Dodge Custom Royal and DeSoto Firesweep to the lineup, importing them as CKD kits from 1958 – and none of them lasted very long. Although prestige cars, their huge fins and pillarless, chrome-encrusted bodies were just too ostentatious for most Australians, and the 318ci V8 in the Belvedere (to say nothing of the 350ci of the Dodge and DeSoto, which had a top speed of 190km/h) just seemed thirsty and wasteful. And – the bottom line was always the bottom line – they were out-priced by the rival Pontiac Laurentian and Ford’s new "Tank" Fairlane, and those were hardly sales sensations in their own right.
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| The Firesweep was as huge as it was beautiful, but it was never going to be a hit in a country where the old money was still mostly rural. (Source: OldCarBrochures) |
Chrysler had far more success at the other end of the market, with a remarkable little pocket rocket called the Simca Aronde. SIMCA (the Société Industrielle de Mécanique et Carrosserie Automobile) had been stood up in 1934 by the Italian-born industrialist Henri-Theodore Pigozzi, with the goal of licence-building Fiats for the French market. In the post-war world, French tastes gradually shifted away from mere survival towards more modern, family-friendly vehicles with performance and style. Accordingly, Pigozzi's team began designing a new, clean-sheet design that owed nothing to Fiat aimed squarely at the middle of this market – the Aronde.
The name meant "Swallow", chosen because such a bird adorned Simca's badge, and there was indeed something bird-like about the deft, dainty shape that emerged in 1951. The formula for the original Aronde 9 was quite conventional: A modern unitary body (incorporating the emergent three-box layout), dimensions that suited the medieval streets of French cities, four doors and four full-size seats. Being a tiny European car, it naturally came with a tiny European engine, in this case a 1,221cc four-cylinder taken from the previous Simca 8, which put out less than 34 kW. That might seem laughable by modern standards, but it only had 950 French kilogrammes to lug around, so this modest power was good for a top speed of 119km/h. It was sent to the rear wheels via a 4-speed manual gearbox (synchros on all but first). Suspension consisted of double-wishbone coils at the front and semi-elliptic leaves with a live axle at the rear, with telescopic shocks front and rear (all set deliberately firm to maximise handling). Brakes were finned 250mm drums all-round, which was normal for the era.
The Aronde was soon known for an enviable combination of good looks, great handling and robust reliability. It grabbed your attention with modern, mid-Atlantic styling, then backed it up with a rewarding driving experience, all without sacrificing everyday utility – very much the French Holden. Simca made it available as a four-door sedan, two-door coupé, three-door station wagon and panel van, and by the time the first major facelift came along in 1956, they had shifted over 100,000 of them to become France's second-largest manufacturer – behind Renault, but ahead of Peugeot, whose 203 represented their main competition.
That facelift arrived with the Aronde 90A, and it was a revelation. The new front end was defined by a very French "three-musketeers" moustache, picked out in chrome, but the real excitement lay under the bonnet. The old 1,221cc four had been bored out to 1,290cc, turning what had been a long-stroke 1.2-litre engine into an almost-square 1.3. The Solex 32 carburettor was retained, but a bump in the compression ratio lifted power to a claimed 36 kW at 4,800rpm. Dubbed the Flash engine, it proved surprisingly lively, with a top speed of 133km/h and 0-100 in about 23 seconds – among the best figures in its class. An expanding model list now included the Élysée (standard, albeit well-appointed sedan), Montlhéry (sporty sedan), Châtelaine (wagon), Commerciale (panel van) Grand Large (two-door hardtop), Océane (two-door cabriolet) and Plein Ciel ("open sky," a stylish two-door coupé, often with two-tone paint).
The Montlhéry was the interesting one, as the name referred to one of Pigozzi's most famous publicity stunts. Henri knew very well that competition and performance records could translate directly into sales, and the model prior to the Aronde, the Simca 8, had already taken high-profile 3rd places in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1950 and '52. But that was nothing compared to what Pigozzi arranged in May 1952: At the steeply-banked Autodome de Montlhéry, just south of Paris, one of the company's new Arondes broke numerous international records by covering 50,000 kilometres non-stop at an average speed of more than 112km/h. When naysayers undermined the achievement by suggesting the car had been especially prepared, Pigozzi came back in August 1953 and tried again, this time with the Automobile Club de France in attendance so there could be no doubts. This time the car was randomly selected off the production line and driven for almost six weeks non-stop, covering 100,000km at an average speed of more than 100km/h.
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| You'd imagine he'd be happier about it. (Source: Shannons Club) |
This combination of simplicity, durability and speed attracted interest from the developing world, and in the 1950s, that included Australia.
Simcas in Australia
By 1956, Simca had a deal with Northern Star Engineering (later Northern Engineering) in North Melbourne to produce 90A Arondes from CKD kits, using local content where possible. They were joined in 1958 by Continental & General Distributors, who operated out of a 6,500 square metre facility on Dougharty Road, West Heidelberg – a factory built to assemble Austins, but now charged with building 3,000 Simcas per year, with 40 percent local content. The exact wheres and whens of all this are disputed, however, and nobody seems to know exactly how many cars were produced, or even where the Northern Star Engineering's assembly plant actually was. Some sources mention Keys Road, Moorabbin, but no Arondes ever emerged with Moorabbin compliance plates, and apparently the body jigs were moved from Heidelberg to Mile End South, so who can really say? I'm not qualified to weigh in either way.
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| The source claims this is Northern Star's assembly line in 1956, but is it? I don't even know anymore. I've been trying to find out for a month, but reliable information doesn't seem to exist online. (Source: Pocketoz) |
What I can report is that, in May 1958, a 90A Aronde would set you back £1,095 (not quite $43,000 in 2024), according to an ad from The Australian Jewish Herald on Trove. Comparing it with the Holden FC, which launched that very month, is instructive: For your thousand pounds, you got a car with 18 fewer kilowatts, but also 145 fewer kilogrammes, so it was only 4.3 seconds slower to 100km/h. Top speeds were basically neck-and-neck, 133km/h for the Simca versus 136 for the Holden, so the real difference would've been how fast the engine was turning over – then as now, high redlines made Australians nervous. Given the size of the cars, the Holden would've been slightly roomier, but only slightly. No, what the customer really did when they bought a Simca was trade almost a litre of engine capacity for more mod cons, things like reclining "Airliner" seats (a luxury back then), turn indicators, push-button windscreen washers and built-in air conditioning – all included, as the ad repeatedly trumpeted, AT NO EXTRA CHARGE! That was especially cutting when the Aronde was £15 less than the asking price of an FC Standard, which didn't even come with indicators: You had to shell out for the Special to get those, and not even a Special came with factory-fitted A/C, let alone AT NO EXTRA CHARGE! Clearly, there was something to this Simca.
Chrysler thought so too. Head office in New York had been looking to increase their European footprint for years, and France's second-largest manufacturer would make an excellent foot in the door. Accordingly, in 1958 they stepped in and bought a sizeable stake in Simca (variously reported as 15-30 percent of shares). If they'd stopped there it might have been a great success, but unfortunately, about the same time they also bought up Britain's failing Rootes Group and began forcing the two companies to merge. In time that would have dire consequences for Simca, Rootes and Chrysler's brands alike, especially in Australia, but for now all that was in the future. In 1958, it just meant Chrysler could begin re-equipping its Mile End South plant in Adelaide for the job of assembling Simcas, using its established supply chain to reach even higher levels of local content – reportedly including tyres, batteries, paint, window glass and interior trim. The handover would be complete by July 1959, bringing back some of the showroom traffic that had been lost with the introduction of the Royal.
It would be several years before anyone could mention Chrysler Australia in the same breath as Ford Australia (let alone the colossus that was GM-H), and the phrase "The Big Three" began to enter the Australian parlance. But surviving long enough to get there at all would be owed in no small part to this petite, very chic French car that stood out on dusty Australian roads like a champagne flute among a cluster of half-empty stubbies. It didn't pull Chrysler through on its own – there were a couple more projects in the pipeline that we'll cover next time – but all the same, if you love a Charger, you should probably thank a Simca.
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