CarBrandLogos archive · Simca · 1936

SimcaSimca 5

Fiat's Topolino, built at Nanterre and sold to France as a French car.

Photo: Alexander Migl · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Simca history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Simca 5, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Simca was founded in 1934 by Henri Pigozzi, an Italian who had built a business shipping scrap metal to Fiat and then became its distributor in France. Rather than import cars into a market that taxed them heavily, he assembled and built them locally, and took over a former Donnet factory at Nanterre to do it.

1936 Simca 5 · Alexander Migl · CC BY-SA 4.0

Design and engineering

The Simca 5, launched in 1936, was the Fiat 500 Topolino under a French name: a tiny two-door saloon with a 570 cc four-cylinder engine ahead of the driver, rear-wheel drive and a four-speed gearbox, designed by Dante Giacosa to be a real car in miniature rather than a cyclecar. It was cheap to run at a time when French taxation punished large engines, and it sold well enough to establish Simca as a genuine manufacturer.

In production

Production ran until 1948, spanning the occupation and the immediate post-war shortages, and the 6 replaced it with a more modern overhead-valve engine.

At a glance