Boy, there’s a lot to unpack in this shot. Where do I even start?
First of all, we have a strange looking SUV sort of thing with a front end that looks very familiar to fans of old European cars, surrounded by hunters that appear to have gotten this machine trapped in a ditch after going mere feet from the road itself. Even more odd is that the truck is headed towards this road, not away from it, so it managed to get somewhere overlanding before the last few yards of making it back.
Who are these hunters? One of them looks remarkably like the late Philip Lynot, lead singer and guitarist for the Irish band Thin Lizzy:
Obviously, I can’t identify the people, but I can certainly tell you that they’re driving a Matra Simca Rancho, and I can offer some reasoning as to why it might be stuck. It sure looks tough in the picture below, right? Looks can be deceiving. This thing could lay claim to being one of the first image-over-capabilities SUVs; it wasn’t even available with four-wheel-drive. If it looks at first like a Simca 1100 driving out of a greenhouse, that’s because it kind of is. The whole front section of this concoction is that old French compact, attached to the spacious, glass covered boxy rear cabin.
Matra was way ahead of their time in understanding that most people that were getting into things like Jeeps and Range Rovers would never go off road beyond putting a wheel onto the median now and then. It’s the look that matters, and things like hood mounted spotlights (that could only turn on with the car off), a mock push bar and rugged roof rack over the original Simca passenger compartment made this thing look like it was ready to drive the Darian Gap when in fact it was only capable of driving to The Gap, but if the snow wasn’t more than a few inches deep.
The Rancho did offer a lot of versatility in terms of cargo and passenger carrying, just like crossovers of today. You can see some of the different possibilities here:
Here’s a final riddle for you. The Rancho has seats for six people, has only four headrests, but it still has head restraints for every occupant. Uh, what? Take a look below.
The rear facing third row shares the headrests with second row passengers. That’s brilliant! Now, with only 80 horsepower on tap, trying to move those six people at any rate of speed will be impossible. Plus, you’ll almost certainly get stuck like our crew above. Thankfully, with the optional tailgate ladder, Phil could have climbed onto the roof with his guitar and played “The Boys Are Back In Town” or “Jailbreak” until help arrived.
Who says you need all wheel drive to have a good time?
Simca 1100s were sold in Canada by Chrysler dealers who wanted nothing to do with them, pushing something called the Plymouth Cricket instead. Mercifully, few people bought either one.
That picture has a real Withnail and I vibe to it.
These promotional photos just baffle me. I guess they were going for random realism but they often end up as awkward staged.
You go to all the trouble to get the actors, costumes, props, animals, and vehicle to the location and then take a quickie shot and hit the pub.
Black lab sniffing something. Accurate.
Kid me loved the Rancho and couldn’t understand how such a pretty car could be born from that ugly old SIMCA 1100. My little brother got the 1:24 toy version from Joustra for Christmas.
In french pop culture it’s the car from the two “La Boum” movies with a young Sophie Marceau. It was the car driven by her character’s father who was played by Claude Brasseur.
Oh look, if it isn’t one of the best press pictures ever taken in automotive history!
This was my computer background for so long back when 1024×768 was considered wallpaper size!
If this shitheap can have a split tailgate, there is no world in which it is “too large an engineering problem” for today’s manufacturers.
ALL HAIL THE SPLIT GATE
Hah, as I opened this Cold Start, I was noting the limited tread on the tires and thinking to myself how convenient it was that three people went on this ‘hunting trip’, as that meant two (plus the photographer, in reality) were available to push.
I used to love the Matra Rancho – a frickin cool car that as you say was decades ahead of its time – yet even though our family car was in fact a Simca 1100 for a while (my stepfather was from a family of dodgy Geordie mechanics who used to make money by buying beaters at auction for like 50 quid then flipping them for a couple of hundred, so we went through a lot of obscure, musty French cars) I never realized the connection.
We had them badged as Talbot’s here in UK too
Great, now I have “Jailbreak” in my head.
A friend at college (so a long time ago then) had one of these with a bit of rust. Seatbelts were worn at all times as any cornering at a speed above a crawl (like every roundabout for instance) caused the passenger door to fly open. One of the most exciting vehicles I’ve been in.
Cedric Bixler-Zavala there looks like he’s never held a gun before.
As you noted with the Thin Lizzy comment, this looks ever so much like a seventies rock band making some sort of ironic statement on the “posh life”.
Apparently, both of these guys called “shotgun.”
Looks like it has decent ground clearance, and it was probably rather light. With the right tires and a decent driver, I bet it could keep going far beyond where many modern 4WD SUVs on standard road tires would get stuck.
Disappointed the Matra Ranchero is no longer available. I like how they went all-in on the 4×4 look, but little capability in the same manner as the modern brodozer.
I think for most Dutch in the ages 30 and up, the Matra Ranchero has been cemented in our collective memory with a children’s TV duo called Bassie and Adriaan. Bassie is a clown and Adriaan is an acrobat and yes, they used to be circus artists before becoming TV celebrities.
In their earlier series they drove a red Matra Ranchero with yellow dots plastered all over the body. You can see them sitting on top of in this photo:
https://www.autoblog.nl/files/2021/09/Bassie-auto-twee.jpg
After two or three seasons they exchanged the Ranchero for a second generation Honda Prelude that received an even worse treatment featuring eyebrows on the popup headlights. They started a trend decades before everyone else started doing that!
In one episode it even outpaced a Datsun 260Z on the old Zandvoort circuit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbE_8kUVdw0
Apparently they spent most of their yearly budget hiring the stuntdriver for this. The 260Z was Adriaan’s personal car.
As you can see, most of us can’t take the Ranchero seriously anymore. Just like the second generation Prelude, we simply think of Bassie and Adriaan when we see these cars…
Lynot was the bassist and singer for Thin Lizzy, not guitarist.
Now that I’ve got that out of my system, back to the rest of the article.
I appreciate the correction- my apologies!
Whew, thank you. I was afraid I’d have to do it.
This is one of my favorite press photos! Also, a Rancho cutaway is my background on my second monitor.
As I was goin’ over
The Cork and Kerry mountains
I saw Captain Farrell
And his money he was countin’
I first produced my shotgun
And then produced my Simca
I said “Stand o’er and deliver
Or the devil he may take ya”.
Matra ring dumb a do dumb a da
Whack for my daddy-o,
Whack for my daddy-o
There’s whiskey in the Ranch-o
Quite seriously the male models look like they have never held shotguns before in their lives and that woman with the dog seems like she’s only going to touch him if they make her. And poor dog! He’s looking over his shoulder at his handler just begging “can I get outta here yet?” In the mean time, Curly looks like somebody goosed him and he’s not quite over it yet.
The curly haired guy has literally never held a firearm, also what is he looking at? Nothing, there is nothing in his line of sight.. and yet, he’s completely terrified.
Look at this yellow Bagheera! <3
I have always loved this ‘shot’. Also notice the way the mannequins are handling the riffles. Not a great amount of preparation here. Very French 🙂
When getting my drivers licence in 1994, I dreamt about this car (some relatives had a Simca dealership, so Simca where common in my family). But at this time Simca was defunct and all Ranchos were already fallen to brown dust. So my first car was a Mercedes Benz 206 Diesel, a cab forward van with FWD and of Hanomag F20 Legacy. With a whopping 60hp from a /8 Diesel it kinda moved. This alse rusted, but at least had a frame.
I was gonna say the shotgun man looks like Prince if you ordered him from Alibaba.
His Love Symbol looks suspiciously like a question mark with a backslash over it.