I had to look up what “Aronde” meant in French; it’s “dovetail,” very fitting for a car company whose symbol was a bird in flight. This stylish little coupe is located in Auburn Hills, Michigan and is for sale here on eBay, where the buy-it-now is $3,500 and the opening bid (below reserve) is $2,000. The little car is said to run and drive “beautifully” and certainly appears solid in the pictures. The brakes have been rebuilt and even the period radio works! Yes, there’s some rust and crinkles, and I have no clue where you’d get replacement body parts, but I did find some mechanical components available in the US. Although the Chevy wheel covers aren’t original, they are period and the owner has painted the centers to camouflage their origin. Want to be different? The entry price is $3,500!
Wow, crickets?! Another cool little project and a cheap ticket to enter vintage car market. It’s a coupe, it’s european and its unusual. What’s not to like?
Didn’t sell for $1,950 (under reserve). Cute car!
My family’s “second car” was an Aronde (4-door sedan) Montlhery (sp?) with the “Flash” 1300cc four, but the same color as the shown hardtop. Nice little car (sorry, no pictures), and reasonably reliable (though I do remember having to get a carburetor part shipped from Solex in France at one point). My mother got smacked in the rear of the family Aronde at a traffic light by a lady in a station wagon, paying more attention to beating her kids than paying attention to the looming stoplight, westbound on Oakland Park Blvd at Andrews in the turning lane (to head south on Andrews). Put a big crease in the trunk, but no frame damage. My mother got a real bad case of whiplash out if it, though. My brother and I drove down to a junkyard in Miami that had an Aronde (beige) in their lot. It fit perfectly, though we then had a powder blue Aronde with a beige trunk. The folks sold the Simca in ’68 when they bought an off-lease ’67 Barracuda (273/2-barrel/Torqueflite) hardtop. It was still two years from my getting my license, so I didn’t have a chance to make a claim for it—I can’t imagine King Motors gave my stepdad much for the Simca…
It had 4 on the column with an extremely vague connection to the reverse gear (I still remember learning a lot of curse words while the folks tried to locate Reverse). The turn signal was a weird tab on top of the steering column that worked on a timer, so at a long light, you might need to actuate the signal switch two or three times before the light changed. I’ve read that the plastic used on the dashboard, the spring-loaded glovebox door in particular, didn’t take to cold weather very well, and in extreme cold snaps, the door did too–snap, that is. The headlights worked on a rotary stalk on the left side of the steering column, where the turn signal lever should have been (but then, it wouldn’t have been French!).
Up and down my street in suburban Fort Lauderdale in the early-mid 60s, there were plenty of wild and wacky foreign cars: ’59 Morris Minor Traveler (woody wagon), early 60s Hillman Minx, our Simca, a 61 (or so) Renault Caravelle, a Borgward Isabella, an MG Magnette (late 50s), and around the corner was a family that had both an oval window VW and a late 50s Saab 93 (in that immediate post-McCarthy era, that must have really caused tongues to wag). The local Servicemaster franchisee’s van fleet consisted of a bunch of English Ford Thames vans.
Only 118 of this SIMCA Aronde called “Coupé Monaco” still surviving are knowed.
I am a member of the French SIMCA Club, I am trying to do an inventory of the Aronde all over the world, I found 4121 of them including 470 out of France in 39 different countries.
Is some one able to say me the VIN= Chassis number of this car please ?
I have added a photo of mine.
Best regards
Purchased my Aronde in 1959 and picked it up at the Paris facility. Before I drove it a block, the plastic that surrounds the shifter broke and I had to return to the shop. It was a pretty good little car and I raced in Germany some. Won a rally once, but I was too much of a novice to do well on the track. Had fun though. I brought it back to the states and my wife who was learning to drive, tore up the synchronizer gear which had to be shipped from France. Before it came in, the local dealer offered me more than I paid for it as trade in on a Plymouth and I took it. Six months later the Simca was still on the used car lot.
Aronde ne veux pas dire queue d’aronde en français mais hirondelle en vieux français pour dire que la voiture a un appétit d’oiseau par rapport a sa consommation et en plus le symbole de la simca etait une hirondelle. Per google translate: Aronde do not mean dovetail in French but swallow old French to say that the car has a birdish appetite for consumption and in addition the symbol of the simca was a swallow.