Simca Horizon (1980) – Enthusiast Wanted

In the category ‘virtually extinct cars’ you could already take a look at a Seat Ronda yesterday, today we park it on your screen as Simca Horizon. According to our data, even rarer than the Ronda, if we limit ourselves to Horizons registered as (Chrysler) Simca. There are only 14 of them on Dutch license plates. This copy does not yet belong with its French plates, but the intention is that that will change, although it remains to be seen whether he will not be known as Talbot.

It is probably one of the very last Horizons badged as Simca, but the Talbot badge on the hood betrays that it is probably already a Talbot on paper. It comes from 1980 and then the still fairly young Horizon continued here as Talbot due to the takeover of Chrysler Europe by PSA. The Talbot Horizon was available for much longer (until 1987) and there are also some more left in the Netherlands.

A complicated story, but otherwise this Horizon is simplicity itself. The Horizon was a well thought-out model, good for the title Car of the Year 1979, but it was mainly a somewhat anonymous mass product. A car that, moreover, could have a formidable enemy in the rust devil and partly for that reason (like many contemporaries, by the way) often did not reach too old an age.

So it is quite something that another 43-year-old Horizon shows up with only about 45,000 km on the clock and, despite the revealing white color, nowhere a striking brown edge. In the interior and under the hood it also looks almost suspiciously neat and clean. The fact that, according to the provider, this Horizon was brought from Paris, where parking is a matter of causing as little damage as possible while pushing away another car, makes it even more remarkable.

What is true of the story about the history of this car, that is still the question. The fact is that there seems to be a neat Horizon here that, how could it be otherwise with a Horizon these days, has to go to an enthusiast. One that is willing to pay €5,950 for a car that was probably only worth a tenth of that at a relatively young age. It can be!