The Simca Rancho, or how the French built the Discovery 12 years before Land Rover

The only trouble was - It was just awful…

On the eve of Land Rover promising to crack down on dodgy Chinese rip-offs (specifically the gold nuggets that come out of unfortunately-named ‘Land Wind’) we remember the dodgy French Discovery rip-off that was released 12 years before the Discovery itself.

This is the… uhh… Talbot Matra Rancho… or the Matra-Simca Rancho… or something like that depending on the owner at any given moment.

It was built within the context of the 1973 oil crisis. See, while demand for big-engined cars with a stronger thirst than Bob Hawke had nosedived, the V8-powered Range Rover had soldiered on.

Simca, at the time owned by Chrysler, decided to capitalise on this anomaly by creating a much cheaper, much more fuel-efficient version.

If this is already sounding like the bones of the concept behind the Land Rover Discovery, just take a look at this thing.

All the design elements are there: Rugged squared-off lines, basic wheels with huge amounts of room to travel, plastic trim bits, stepped roofline and even the safari windows.

Sounds like a recipe for success, only, there were a few problems…

It starts with the platform. The Rancho shared a platform with the Simca 1100. At the time, the little Simca was kind of France’s Volkswagen Golf and the versatile front-drive floorpan was the basis of sedans, wagons and hatchbacks. This meant that the Rancho was front-wheel drive only and had a piddly 1.4-litre 57.2kW four-cylinder carburetted Chrysler Alpine engine.

Other bits were essentially a party-mix from the 1100 family parts-bin. Brakes? From the ‘performance’ 1100 Ti variant. Suspension mirrored the base model 1100 (torsion bars, gross). Windscreen and wing mirrors were from the 1100 commercial pick-up, you get the idea…

The real killer was that front-wheel drive layout. Simca reportedly toyed with the idea of a 4x4 edition, but couldn’t justify the expense. Strangely though, they included a sump guard, we assume in-case an owner felt a bit inspired by the optimistic bodywork or the marketing campaigns which heavily focused on off-road activities.

Surprisingly, despite the confusing discrepancy between apparent and real-world performance, plus the relatively expensive cost of entry (£5,600 in 1980 – roughly AU$47,000 today) sales weren’t slow – the car was quite popular in France and the UK. By 1984, Simca had sold almost 58,000 units.

It was sold in a variety of odd trim levels. Above the base car was the ‘Grand Raid’ which had an added limited-slip-diff and heavy duty tyres, with a spare bolted to the roof. The Rancho X was pitched as a kind of ‘luxury’ edition with alloy wheels.

Then there were also some very rare special editions, the ‘Midnight’ which sported chrome trim (100 built), the ‘Decouvrable’ which looks all Jurassic Park with vinyl seats and canvas windows and the ‘AS’ which was pitched as a working van (to exploit a vehicle tax loophole, it had the rear seats removed.)

Unsurprisingly, all of them were poorly rust-proofed, so you’ll stand little chance of seeing one in the wild. You’d think with that styling, there’s some story about how the designer, Antonis Volanis, ended up at Land Rover but no. Weirdly, as Chrysler UK and Simca were sold off to PSA and phased out of existence, plans for a Rancho replacement became essentially merged into the Renault Espace – the car credited for starting the MPV trend in Europe.

So, a tough-styled faux off-roader well before the likes of Suzuki or Subaru or the Discovery, that wound up being responsible for the launch of the MPV in Europe? Not bad for a cheaply manufactured front-drive pretender…

What do you think? If a car like the Rancho existed today… oh, wait… nevermind…