Matra-Simca, 1974, Bagheera

Matra-Simca Bagheera, 1974

The Bagheera is a compact coupé built from 1973 to 1980 by the French company Matra together with Simca. While Matra was winning on several tracks all over the world, the same could not be said about road-going car production, with the 530 model that struggled to reach the expected selling numbers.
That's how the idea of a new model was born and to lower the costs, the company found Simca as a commercial ally.
So the Bagheera was born, powered by the Simca 1100 engine transversally mounted behind the seats, a solution applied at the time only by the Lamborghini Miura.
The body structure was made of fiberglass panels and aerodynamically studied to reach a top speed of 18o kph.

Quirk:
Another quirk of the French coupé is the cockpit: with its aeronautical gauge cluster, thanks to the seats placed on a single row, it guaranteed abitability for 3 people.

Matra-Simca Bagheera