Chrysler Europe

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Chrysler Europe

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legal form branch
founding 1967
resolution 1979
Seat Poissy , France
Branch Automobile manufacturer

Chrysler 180
Chrysler Alpine
Chrysler Sunbeam

Chrysler Europe was a division of the US automobile manufacturer Chrysler , founded in 1967 and taken over by Peugeot in 1979 .

founding

In the 1960s, Chrysler had plans to establish itself as a global automobile manufacturer. Unlike Ford , Chrysler never had much success outside of the American continent. Even General Motors was with its foreign divisions Opel , Vauxhall , Holden and Bedford much more successful. In 1967 Chrysler managed to buy the Rootes group in the UK , as did Simca in France (in which Chrysler had owned a substantial stake since 1958) and Barreiros in Spain .

Models

The first European vehicle marketed as Chrysler was the 180 in 1970 . This car emerged from the union of two projects that had previously been developed independently at Simca and the Rootes Group.

This was followed in 1975 by a station wagon called Chrysler Alpine in Great Britain and Simca 1307 on the continent . This vehicle was voted Car of the Year in 1976 . Two years later, the smaller Horizon won the award.

Chrysler also designed the three-door station wagon Sunbeam, offered in the United Kingdom and Germany, on the slightly shortened platform of the Rootes Group's Hillman Avenger . This small car with standard drive (engine in front, drive on the rear axle) competed against vehicles like the Ford Fiesta or the VW Polo .

Brands

Initially, the Rootes Group's original brands were retained, but from 1975 onwards, all UK-made models were sold as Chrysler , while the Simca badge appeared on the French variants (sometimes together with the five-pointed Chrysler star and, in some markets, under the Brand name Simca-Chrysler ). For commercial vehicles from Simca and the Rootes Group, Chrysler used the brand name Dodge ( Commer and Karrier also to name the vehicles that were created from badge engineering overseas as Fargo or DeSoto ) . In addition, the brand names Dodge and Simca were also used for other vehicles in some countries, such as Spain, mostly buses and trucks built in Spain that were adopted from the Barreiros range of models, European versions of US vehicles or Simca built in the country. Automobiles.

The company systematically let the former Rootes brands Hillman , Humber and Sunbeam die, but kept the brand name Simca.In 1969, Chrysler Europe signed a contract with the French engineering company Matra to jointly develop a Matra sports car, which was then sold through the Simca dealer network as a Matra-Simca should be sold.

Decline and sale to Peugeot

The brand conglomerate, which was confusing for buyers (at times there were cars with “Chrysler” at the front and “Simca” at the back) combined with mediocre, outdated designs (especially the British models continued to rely on rear-wheel drive, which at the latest since the appearance of the VW Golf was considered out of date) and poor quality resulted in a lack of profits. In addition, the American brand name Chrysler was not well received in Europe, and there was competition from Japanese imports of better quality and construction. Chrysler was also in serious economic trouble in the United States and was on the verge of bankruptcy . The new CEO Lee Iacocca showed little interest in the European market (as he had done in his time in Ford management) and wasted no time implementing his plans, so that Chrysler sold its European business in 1978.

In 1978, Chrysler Europe was sold to Peugeot for the symbolic price of $ 1, who also took over the division's debt, its factories and product lines. The cars were given the resurrected brand name Talbot . The naming rights belonged to Chrysler Europe in two ways: once as Sunbeam-Talbot via the Rootes Group and once as Talbot-Lago via Simca. But just eight years later, the French auto giant had given up the Talbot brand for passenger cars again - even in financial difficulties and until 1991 only used it for commercial vehicles. The successor to the Chrysler Horizon came out in 1985 as the Peugeot 309 . Peugeot sold its shares in Matra along with the Chrysler-initiated construction of a van to Renault , where the car came out as a Renault Espace of the 1st series (built by Matra) . Peugeot was not interested in the production of heavy commercial vehicles and so the production of the earlier British and Spanish Dodge models went to Renault Trucks .

Chrysler itself retained the rights to the construction of the Avenger and the US version of the Horizon. Peugeot was therefore forced to continue to attach Chrysler's five-pointed star to the Avenger, while Chrysler tried to relocate the production site to Argentina when the car was no longer offered in Europe in 1981. The US version of the Horizon continued to be built in the United States as the Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni .

The previous Simca and Rootes assembly plants in Poissy and Ryton-on-Dunsmore continued to operate under Peugeot, but the Rootes plant in Linwood, Scotland fell victim to sales and was closed in 1981. The plant in Ryton-on-Dunsmore closed in December 2006 and the production of the Peugeot 206 , which had been carried out there since the summer of 1998, was relocated to Slovakia . The Peugeot models 309 , 405 and 306 have also been manufactured in England since 1985 . The plant has meanwhile been demolished, leaving room for new factories.

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