Someone Asked Me To Design A ‘Bespoke Boxy Wagon’ So Here’s A Matra Rancho-Style Crossover

Fossilized giant sloth dung. A Veg-O-Matic II. An artificial heart made from an Erector set. What could these things possibly have in common? They’re just three of the 156 million items in the collection of the Smithsonian Institute, otherwise known as “The Nation’s Attic”. This storehouse holds artifacts from centuries ago up to the present time, though I’m drawn to stupid malaise-era touchstones in the archives like Evel Kneivel’s motorcycle and toys belonging to the “Boy In The Bubble Suit” like a Little People barn that goes MOO when you open the door which we all had. Hard to imagine how they’re able to catalog this plethora of paraphernalia and seemingly lost history.

Car companies have a tremendous amount of heritage as well that’s nearly lost to the sands of time. Stellantis now holds a vast number of storied brands under its umbrella. We’re most familiar with Chrysler here in the states, but Stellantis now holds the historic wealth of innovation companies such as Citroen, Fiat, and Peugeot. With some of their brands searching for an elusive and much needed hit today, they’d be wise to revisit some of these creations from the past hundred years for inspiration. That’s what I just did, and I found an answer for what a particular Autopian commenter was requesting. Hell, I think it might also be The Answer to what many buyers are looking for. I certainly didn’t expect to find this solution in Argentina, or be Deux Chaveux powered.

Oh, and did I mention that it was called the Gringo?

Number One With A Bullet

“..because only one thing counts in this life: Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.”  Blake (not Willam Blake but the jerk with an 850i in Glengarry Glen Ross)

What do car buyers really want? That’s the age-old question that auto makers have been challenged with for years, and the best solutions are often painfully simple. We might be giving the late Lee Iacocca more credit than he deserves, but the teams he assembled sure knew how to pin a bunch of pictures onto a corkboard, connect them with strands of yarn and strike gold.

Scenario one: young people want imported sports cars but lack cash and need reliability plus a small back seat? Chop down a Ford Falcon, give it a long hood, bucket seats, and crisp, tasteful styling; debut it at the World’s Fair and call it ”the Mustang” for good measure. Scenrio two: those Mustang buyers now have two and half kids, need lots of space but are (again) short on cash in a time of expensive gas? Take a small existing sedan, put a boxy van-style body on it and throw in three rows of seats. Engineering marvels? Absolutely not, but it doesn’t matter. What did Alec Baldwin’s deliciously horrific character just say is the only thing that counts is? He was a dick, but he was right.

 

Not that one Autopian’s comment indicates a major market opening, but the request that MikeInTheWoods made a little while back got me thinking:

 

That whole “bespoke boxy wagon” part is most appealing, what exactly is MikeInTheWoods referring to? “Boxy wagon” makes me think of the new Hyundai Santa Fe, but I’m pretty sure that thing is too big, too fancy and laden with tech; the name “MikeInTheWoods” does not say crypto-Range-Rover to me. A practical, simple product that’s attainable and attractive is what I’m thinking he wants. It goes back the rather famous Iacocca mantra of “make small cars people want to buy”.  I love station wagons as much as most Autopians, but I’m well aware that they sell like week old hotcakes in America. Think like Lee Iacocca: what do people aspire to? Could a “boxy wagon” really be one of these things?

Possibly. If given unlimited funds, many car buyers would pick up a tough-looking sport utility like a Mercedes G-Wagon, a Land Rover, or even a Jeep Wrangler four door. Ironically, despite appearing to be simple, elemental machines, these things (even the Jeep) are of course quite expensive. Naturally, buyers usually do not have boundless stashes of cash, and there’s a bigger problem than that with these overlanders.

 

I’ve seen more than a few people buy Wranglers and such as “fun” cars only to dump them after less than a few years. A purpose-built off-road machine is constructed to do things that the average driver will never do, at the expense of the tasks these owners do each day. “I got a small sedan as a loaner when my Jeep was in the shop” said one colleague “and I realized how much I missed having a normal car” For the record, he asked me if he should buy a Jeep before he got the one in question, and told him absolutely not. Did he listen? Of course not. I mean, a lot of people romanticize agricultural things like a Lada Niva but I guarantee that for most of them after driving one for just a few miles that love affair would end.

So, people seem to want the image without the hair-shirt punishment; the bogie is locking in our sights. It’s time to pull the trigger.

Faux Wheel Drive

“Get out there! You’ve got the prospects coming in. You think they came in here to get out of the rain? A guy don’t walk on the lot lest he wants to buy. They’re sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it?”   – Blake

Let’s face facts: something like a Jeep Wrangler is a machine purpose built to take on challenges of places like Moab. That’s great if you’re David Tracy, but it makes no sense to pay a premium for the discomfort when you’re a buyer that will take the rusted hulk to the junkyard after 200,000 miles of having never left the tarmac even once. “I need that off road capability, not a car-based thing” you say? Right. Am I going to be forced to show you footage of modified Soobie family cars doing stuff you’ll never dream of? Too late:

 

Don’t even get me started on some of the crap that our own Mercedes Streeter took onto challenging off road trails (a Smart car?), and finished:

 

Look, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that rough-and-ready look in a car. The reality, though, is that they should get a new kind of product with that kind of appearance but is mechanically more carlike. A great example of this rugged-looking toy-like multipurpose vehicle is the Honda Element. It’s a personal favorite of mine but I’m well aware that mainstream buyers find it “quirky” and it strays a bit too far from the pure military vehicle ripoff aesthetic that seems to be popular in this market.

I could spend paragraphs pontificating about why I think that the Element was such a great design, but why? If the majority of people don’t get it, all of my chin scratching mumbo jumbo isn’t going to stop the prospective buyer from saying that it looks like a pit bull in grey lederhosen. “Yah, I wanna Jeep, uhkay?” says the prospective buyer, snapping her gum and walking away. She’s gonna spend $35,000 over the next sixty months. I want that money, and I do want her to get the car that she really needs without her knowing it.

What’s required then seems to be a car-chassis-based fake Wrangler-type vehicle that hides its mechanical roots. However, if I’m forced to regurgitate existing vehicles to rehash and trigger old-school nostalgia, I want to at least give them something different and introduce Americans to some good designs from the past that they likely aren’t familiar with, but should be, dammit.

Stellantis now has a long. rich history that includes not only major brands like the old Chrysler Europe (Simca) but smaller subsidiary partners like Matra, the independent conglomerate that gave developed race cars and (arguably) first minivan, the Espace. Few Americans remember it, but this company really pioneered the “soft roader” with something called the Matra-Simca Rancho.

As I said in a Cold Start a few months back:

(The Rancho) 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 look like ready to drive the Darian Gap when in fact it was only capable of driving to The Gap, if the snow wasn’t more than a few inches.

You could even get it with a rear facing seat to carry a total of six passengers, though with 86 horsepower you had better hope that some of those people were pretty small. These things were supposedly popular in period as fashion items on the streets of Paris and London despite the limited overlanding abilities, a “bomber jacket” of a car.

There’s more that my Facebook feed somehow presented to me a few weeks ago. It’s a rare thing that you are in the presence of a perfect object, but the vehicle on the screen of my phone was seemingly without flaw. As luck would have it, this simulated Jeep was from a brand that’s now part of the vast Stellantis group. How can they (and we) ignore it?

Isn’t That A Slur? Really?

If you think the snail-with-a-duck’s face-shaped two-cylinder Citroen 2CV is an odd-looking car, you’ll certainly be even more perplexed by the off-road variants that the French brand built. The Sahara model was an off-road model featuring not two but four cylinders, but done in an odd way: there was a twin cylinder engine in front and one in back (and gas tanks under the front seats, with a hole in each door for the fillers). The open-topped Mehari (open everything, really) was a multipurpose vehicle on a 2CV chassis; Citroen offered a version with four-wheel-drive but only one engine this time (with around 24 horsepower that’s less than six per wheel).

You could be forgiven for thinking that a 2CV powered utility machine built by a successor to the Citroen subsidiary in far off Argentina might be even more bizarre looking, but you’d be wrong. Take a look at this grainy picture that I saw of the 1983 front drive Citroen/IES 3CV Gringa, also sold as the four-wheel drive Gringo:

 

That’s thing’s actually nice looking. This ABS plastic-bodied little SUV has the well-balanced minimalism of the first 1970 Range Rover; it’s also evocative of Dick Teague’s 1984 Jeep XJ but even cleaner. It shares a bit with the new-for-1979 Mercedes G-Wagon but if anything it’s better resolved. For example, the Benz has those rather silly looking VW Beetle-style turn signals on the fender tops. The Gringo has rabbit ear-style indicators as well, but they’re flush with the tops and sides hood even though they don’t open with it. It’s a detail that looks industrial and not “car like” while still being well integrated; that’s some good design there.

 

The Gringa/Gringo was available in a wide variety of bodystyles including a pickup truck and a high-cube van. Digging that Jeep-style grille as well:

Due to a supposed lack of funds, the IES Gringa/Gringo did not have a great reputation. The engine and transmission were from a 2CV, but the chassis was unique to the Argentinian car and reportedly had serious durability issues, ultimately putting paid to the project. None of this matters to me; it’s not like I’m going to make a new two-cylinder car anyway. We just want the look, and the Gringo has it. The current G-Wagon looks like the 1979 model but shares virtually nothing with the original car, and neither will our new Dodge wagon utility. Come on amigos, vamanos nuevo Gringo!

If This Doesn’t Look Fun You Must Be Dead

Let’s say it’s a Saturday afternoon and you’re on Dealership Row with the unfortunate task of looking for a new small family crossover in the thirty grand range. You’ve seen the cheapest RAV4s on the Toyota lot, driven a Honda CR-V, and then had a Mitsubishi dealer pester you with “what would it take for you to drive out of here with an Outlander today?”. You can’t remember if it was a Hyundai Tucson or Kia you looked at next, and they’re all mixed up in your mind now since they sort of look the same. Nearing closing time pull into the back of a Dodge store for no reason other than to use the bathroom and see this:

 

You stop in your tracks- what the hell am I looking at? It looks old school but it does have a new car window sticker, and there’s too much modern detailing for a custom shop to do. It’s very similar to the latest 70-series Toyota Land Cruiser; a modern vehicle yet still a massaged forty-year-old design. What the hell am I looking at? It’s a metallic Thistle green Dodge GrinGo, and it’s a box in a sea of rounded off SUVs trying to be “stylish”. It looks remarkably like the original 1983 Argentinian Gringo, just scaled up to RAV4/CR-V size and with some minor changes.

Honestly, I was afraid to do too much lest we deface the Mona Lisa, if the Mona Lisa was a stubby little South American truck. I brought the beltline up slightly, altered and modernized the wheel arch openings at the edges for the much larger tires, and brought the door openings down a little lower. Also, did you see the hidden rear door? While I do sort of despise the whole “false two door” thing so common today, adding four standard doors would just kill the look of the GrinGo. Note that the doors would be “suicide” style rear opening ones but unlike those on things like the old Honda Element and extended cab trucks you could open them with the front ones still shut.

What’s with that amazing bumped-up roof with extra windows, you ask the Dodge salesperson? Well, this is just one of the many versions of the GrinGo you can choose from. There’s the standard flat roofed model, and then this one with the raised “Rancho” roof and front luggage rack. Is it a hybrid? The Dodge man tells you that this one is, and a plug-in one at that with all wheel drive, but you can get just the turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline motor driving the front wheels if you want. Hell, you can even have a five-speed manual with the base model, as Mike asked for.

In back you can choose a lift-up hatch or a split tailgate. There’s an option for a spare tire on back if you don’t want run flats (mounted to the door on the one style, mounted to a carrier on the other). The license holder flanked by lights from the front is repeated on the back, but the plate sunken to illuminate it (up front, the plate sits further out to allow you hide a winch under it). The USB-slot shaped steps in the bumper appear to be low taillights as on the original Gringa/Gringo, while the real taillamps are a high-visibility full width bar that integrates so well into the tailgate as to almost disappear.

Wait, is that a tiny backwards facing third row? Yes, with the Rancho roof you’ll be able to carry two more (small) people with you; the only thing is that you can’t get the extra range battery option that takes up the space the fold-up seat needs for a footwell. The options list is as long as your arm, with things like oversized tires on custom steel wheels and roof mounted light bar as you see on the example above. Despite many of the boxes being ticked on the list, the extras still don’t push the price any higher than even a mid-level zero-personality Japanese competitor. Even if you go with a base model, it would feel like an “elemental” machine and not a product for a total cheapskate as it might with a more traditional car.

Hopping inside, you find the interior is as good as the outside. The design inspiration appears to be those heavy-duty cell phone cases, and that aesthetic is applied to the screens for the instruments, complete with buttons on the sides like the volume up and down on the phone. In a fun twist you can even get hand-crank windows for pure simplicity (as Mike requested, with a round area for the crank that also houses the window switches if you chose to pop for electric windows). This one hasn’t been specified by such a tightwad, but at least it has forgone the extra-large optional lower screen in the center of the dash for the standard “plate” full of large control knobs that Mike asked us for.

A quick test drive is almost a formality at this point, but you are pleasantly surprised at how something that looks like a tough little truck really drives just like any other crossover. You believe the salesperson when they say someone is supposed to come back Monday to buy this early delivery example.

Your wife and kids are at home thinking you’ve been kidnapped as darkness falls, waiting for you to return with Chipotle burritos and a new $35,000 Beigemobile to replace the old 2014 Blandmobile crossover. Why is something with bright lights on the roof pulling into the driveway? Your eleven-year-old stares out the living room window at you in the driveway, her mouth agape like you’ve shown up on a unicorn. Wait until the cool kids in the pickup line at school see me get out of this.

What Would Lido Do?

“The money’s out there. You pick it up, it’s yours. You don’t, I got no sympathy for you….Close (the sale), it’s yours. If not, you’re going to be shining my shoes.” –Blake

See that scenario above? With buying a car, there’s what you need, what you want, and what you can afford. A car maker that finds a harmonic convergence of all three can print money. MikeInTheWoods might be alone in having an interest in a “bespoke boxy wagon”, like maybe a quarter-of-the-price G-Wagon that drives like a car and can be customized to the hilt, yet I doubt it.

Case in point: our own Matt Hardigee recently wrote a semi-viral piece about the Subaru Forester he longs to soon replace. He’s not sure exactly what to buy as a replacement, but do you know what he told me that he’s had recently as a screen background on his laptop? A ghost cutaway picture of a Matra-Simca Rancho.

Do you think Matt could resist a GrinGo? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure about one thing: if Matt or MikeInTheWoods goes into a Dodge dealer today, they aren’t coming home with a Dodge Hornet. If you’re Stellantis, that’s a problem.

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