Junkyard Find: 1964 Simca 1000

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

During my recent trip to Sweden, I took in a Folkrace, saw many old American cars on the street, visited a farm full of restored classic Chryslers, and, of course, went to the junkyard. We’ve seen this 1966 Toyota Crown station wagon and this 1963 Ford Taunus 17M at Bloms Bilskrot in Söråker, and now here’s a very rusty example of a car that was popular in Europe but never made much of an impression in North America: the Simca 1000.

We have a single Simca racing in the 24 Hours of LeMons, but it’s a front-drive Simca 1100 (which was badged as a 1204 in the United States). I hope to see a Vedette racing in the series someday.

Was the last owner of this car named Greta Swedin?

The top-down rust, no doubt caused by decades of birch-forest leaf mulch building up on the car, is pretty scary.

Still, some pieces for a Swedish Simca restorer remain (if there are any Simca restorers in Sweden, that is).

The 1000 has a rear engine with water cooling.


The 1000 has a respectable racing heritage in Europe, so perhaps some of the parts on this one may go into a rally car.

Room for the relatives!



Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
3 of 42 comments
  • Redbat01 Redbat01 on Jan 16, 2015

    Simca 1000. Rear engine car, almost done right. Simca sold nearly 1.6 million of these fascinating little cars. You can read all about the design and evolution of the Simca 1000 here: http://www.corvair.org/chapters/njace/simca_1000.html

    • Hudson Hudson on Jan 16, 2015

      I quite like my 77 Rallye 2. Although haven't been able to drive it much since I got it being winter and all.

  • -Nate -Nate on Feb 10, 2020

    2.10.2020 Late to the party here . Good to hear these were good little econo boxes . Looks cute to me . French cars are.....'different' (means weird), once you understand this they're wonderful ~ I've owned and loved Peugeots and Citroens, a Machinist at my last workplace was a Cajun who loved his 196? Simca . -Nate

  • Google Maybe if the Toronto police weren't so busy falsely arresting reporters who were doing their job, they might have more time to protect the citizens of Toronto from these thieves. Of course its easier to pick on peaceful reporters than actually arrest criminals who may have guns!
  • SCE to AUX It's fun when liberal interests fight each other.
  • Varezhka Suzuki Jimny, Toyota Century, and I know it technically just ended production but Honda e.
  • CoastieLenn For those that care to read the details of the crash NOT included in this article but published elsewhere- this happened at nearly 10pm when the CRV was stopped in the center lane of travel, lights off, with the driver remaining in the car. Not only is it not known if Blue Cruise was being used, it would have been a nightmare for most alert human drivers to mitigate that driving the 70+mph speed limit on many sections of I-10 in Texas, much less an AV system.
  • Jeff This is what I would want: Toyota has now released an affordable truck called the Toyota IMV 0. The newly developed vehicle made in Thailand comes with a rear-wheel drive and a gasoline 2.0-liter inline-four matched to a 5-speed manual transmission. NEW $10,000 Toyota Pickup Has Ford & GM Crapping ... YouTube · Tech Machine 8 minutes, 46 seconds Dec 26, 2023
Next