Simca (Société Industrielle de Mécanique et Carrosserie Automobile; Mechanical and Automotive Body Manufacturing Company) was a French automaker, founded in November 1934 by Fiat S.p.A. and directed from July 1935 to May 1963 by Italian Henri Pigozzi.

They began business together in 1922 with Pigozzi acting as a scrap merchant, buying old automobile bodies and sending them to Fiat for recycling.

[8] Of the businesses that emerged as France's big four auto-makers after the war, Simca was unique in not suffering serious bomb damage to its plant.

[9] There were persistent suggestions that Henri Pigozzi's close personal relationship with the Agnelli family (which owned Fiat) and Fiat's powerful political influence with the Mussolini government in Italy secured relatively favourable treatment for Simca during the years when France fell under the control of Italy's powerful ally, Germany.

[9] Following the 1944 liberation, the company's close association with Italy became an obvious liability in the feverish atmosphere of recrimination and new beginnings that swept France following four years of German occupation.

Nevertheless, shortly after the liberation the Nanterre plant's financial sustainability received a boost when Simca won a contract from the American army to repair large numbers of Jeep engines.

With half an eye on the Volkswagen project across the Rhine, the authorities determined that GFA should produce the two door version of the "AFG",[11] a small family car that had been developed during the war by the influential automobile engineer, Jean-Albert Grégoire.

Regarding the future of the French automobile industry, Grégoire held strong opinions, two of which favoured front-wheel drive and aluminium as a material for car bodies.

A few weeks after the liberation Grégoire joined the Simca board as General Technical Director, in order to prepare for the production of the AFG at the company's Nanterre factory.

Simca's long standing (but Italian born) Director General, Henri Pigozzi, was obliged to deploy his very considerable reserves of guile and charm in order to retain his own position within the company, and it appears that in the end Pigozzi owed his very survival at Simca to the intervention with the national politicians of his new board room colleague, Jean-Albert Grégoire.

In trying to make it more appealing to the style conscious car buyers who, it was hoped, would appear in Simca showrooms once the economy picked up and government restrictions on car ownership began to be relaxed, Simca designers took the underpinnings of the Grégoire prototype and clothed it with various more conventionally modern bodies, the last of which looked uncannily similar to a shortened Peugeot 203.

[10] This “Simca-Grégoire” performed satisfactorily in road tests in France and around Turin (home town of Fiat who still owned Simca), and by September 1946 the car was deemed ready for production.

Sensing that there was no prospect of putting the “Simca-Grégoire” into production any time soon, General Technical Director Grégoire resigned from the company early in 1947.

The French economy in this period was in a precarious condition and government pressure was applied on the automakers to maximize export sales.

In the struggle to maximize exports, Simca was handicapped by the fact that it was not allowed to compete directly with its principal Italian shareholder, Fiat.

The Simca plant received a visit by Juscelino Kubitschek before his inauguration in 1956, organized by a Brazilian General who had a family member employed there.

[17] Simca also lobbied directly in Minas, but in the end were forced to present their own proposal, which was accepted with a number of conditions.

[17] The delays in passing the GEIA rules meant that Simca, which established its first plant in São Paulo, was unable to access hard currency and suffered severe parts shortages as a result.

[19] Simca remained based in São Paulo for the entire time they were active in Brazil and never moved to Minas, as originally promised.

[13] At this stage, however, the dominant shareholder remained Fiat S.p.A., and their influence is apparent in the engineering and design of Simcas of that period such as the 1000 and 1300 models introduced respectively in 1961 and 1963.

1967 saw the more powerful 1200S Bertone Coupe that, with a horsepower upgrade in 1970, could reach the dizzying speed of almost 112 mph (180 km/h), making it the fastest standard production Simca ever built.

The last remaining Simca and Rootes models were discontinued by the end of 1981, and the Simca-based Alpine and Horizon soldiered on through the first half of the 1980s using the resurrected Talbot badge, which itself had vanished from passenger cars within a decade.