Editing Simca (section)

==1946: a decisive year==
On 3 January 1946 the new government's five-year plan for the automobile industry (remembered, without affection, as the [[Paul-Marie Pons|Pons Plan]]) came into force.<ref name=Automobilia1947>{{cite journal| title =Automobilia| journal = Toutes les voitures françaises 1947 (Salon de Paris: Octobre 1946 )| volume = 4|page=72|year = 1997|publisher=Histoire & collections|location=Paris }}</ref>    Government plans for Simca involved pushing it into a merger with various smaller companies such as [[Delahaye|Delahaye-Delage]], Bernard, [[Laffly]] and [[Unic]] so as to create an automobile manufacturing  combine to be called “Générale française automobile” (GFA).   With half an eye on the [[Volkswagen Type 1|Volkswagen]] project across the Rhine, the authorities determined that GFA should produce the two door version of the "AFG",<ref>AFG = Aluminium Français-Grégoire</ref> a small family car that had been developed during the war by the influential automobile engineer, [[Jean-Albert Grégoire]].<ref name=Automobilia1947/>    Grégoire owed his influence to a powerfully persuasive personality and a considerable engineering talent.   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.<ref name=Automobilia1947/>

For Simca, faced with a determinedly dirigiste left-wing [[Provisional Government of the French Republic|French government]], the prospect of nationalisation seemed very real.<ref name=Automobilia1947/> ([[Renault]] had already been confiscated and nationalised by the government at the start of 1945.) 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]].<ref name=Automobilia1947/> In return, Grégoire obtained the personal commitment of the surviving Director General to the production at Nanterre of his two-door AFG.<ref name=Automobilia1947/>

It is very easy to see how the two-door AFG looked, because its four-door equivalent went into production, little changed from Grégoire's prototype, as the [[Panhard Dyna X]]. It was a car designed by an engineer, and Pigozzi thought it ugly.   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]].<ref name=Automobilia1947/> 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. But Pigozzi was still cautious. He had little enthusiasm for the gratuitously unfathomable complexities involved in producing a mass-market front-wheel drive car.<ref name=Automobilia1947/> The experience of the [[Citroën Traction Avant]], which had bankrupted its manufacturer in the mid-1930s, was not encouraging. Pigozzi therefore applied to the (at this stage still strongly interventionist) government for a far higher level of government subsidy than the government could contemplate.<ref name=Automobilia1947/> Both the “Simca-Grégoire” project and the government's own enthusiasm for micro-managing the French automobile industry were by now running out of momentum. 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.<ref name=Automobilia1947/>

Meanwhile, at the first Paris Motor Show since the end of the [[Second World War|war]], in October 1946, two models were on display on the Simca stand, being the [[Simca 5]] and the [[Simca 8]], at this stage barely distinguishable from their pre-war equivalents. A new car arrived in 1948 with the [[Simca 6]], a development of the Simca 5 which it would eventually replace, featuring an overhead valve 570&nbsp;cc engine: the Simca 6 was launched ahead of the introduction of the equivalent [[Fiat]].

The French economy in this period was in a precarious condition and government pressure was applied on the automakers to maximize export sales. During the first eight months of 1947, Simca exported 70% of cars produced, placing it behind Citroën (92% exported), Renault (90% exported), Peugeot (87% exported) and [[Ford SAF|Ford France]] (83% exported). 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.<ref name=Automobilia1948>{{cite journal| title =Automobilia| journal = Toutes les voitures françaises 1948 (salon 1947)| volume = 7| pages =74–75|year = 1998|publisher=Histoire & collections|location=Paris }}</ref>