Axon's Automotive Anorak: Style over substance – the ideal SUV launched 40 years ago!

Today SUVs and Crossovers have become the norm, and new car buyers just can’t seem to get enough of them. Frustratingly though, realistically 90 per cent+ of the SUVs sold in the UK get used for frequently pointless on-tarmac tasks, such as the daily school run and commute, plus trips to the supermarket and local recycling tip, rather than venturing off-road into the rough stuff. It’s rare for the majority of these all-terrain SUVs ever see any off-road action at all, beyond the occasional excursion onto the grass garden centre overflow car park or local pony club outing.

The off-road capabilities of some modern SUVs are far in excess of the typical owner’s use of the vehicle, especially in the case of a ‘serious’ mud-plugging off-roader, such as a Land Rover Discovery or Toyota Land Cruiser.

Quite why today’s car buyers’ choice to lug around the excess weight and burden of an all-wheel-drive SUV when they rarely use it for its prime purpose is rather lost on me. These days SUV’s have become a ‘heart-over-head’ purchase, a conscious image choice, making a style statement for a lifestyle dream few of their owners actually live.

Granted, the lofty driving position and extra space and versatility of an SUV have their attractions, but many modern models would struggle to tackle their way up a damn grassy slope, and do most owners really need to lug around the extra weight and the wasteful power to all four wheels of an SUV, resulting in higher running costs, a greater thirst for fuel, higher emissions, and so on?

In the vast majority of cases, the answer is no. So, what is the solution to those that desire the SUV look and practicality, but don’t want or need the extra complexity and add costs of all-wheel-drive? The ideal answer exists, and has done for the last 40 years!  

Way back in 1977, the ex-Formula One World Champion, three-time Le Mans winner and specialist French sports car maker, Matra, introduced a pioneering new vehicle, the Rancho, initially sold under Chrysler Europe’s Matra-Simca banner, morphing into a Talbot-Matra in late 1979 when Peugeot acquired theailing American giant’s European operations.

For those that lusted after the landmark Range Rover in the 1970s, but couldn’t quite afford one, the front-wheel-drive-only Matra Rancho was the perfect solution, as it had the tough off-road style and image of Solihull’s finest, without the complex and costly four-wheel-drive system and associated running costs.

Based around the utility pick-up variant of the popular front-drive Simca 1100 – a pioneering hatchback launched 50 years ago and ultimately becoming the best-selling car in Europe for a couple of years – the Rancho craftily shared the Simca’s main metal structure, plus it’s front wings, bonnet, passenger doors, windscreen, dashboard and front seats to minimize the development and production costs for the cash-strapped Chrysler group.

The clever dual-purpose Matra-conceived Rancho was the work of the gifted Greek car designer Antonis Volanis, who also styled Matra’s mid-engined three-seater Bagheera and Murena sports cars, plus the pioneering Renault Espace, more of which anon. His airy, raised rear roof section design went on to inspire a number of other rough-and-tumble vehicles, most notably the original Land Rover Discovery of 1989, which aped the Matra’s pioneering high-level rear passenger glass and profile.

The Daihatsu Rugger (Fourtrak in the UK) wagon, plus its Toyota Blizzard and BMW-powered Bertone Freeclimber siblings, also took clear design inspiration from the Rancho, as did the Italian Fiat 127-based Coriasco Farm, the Escort-based Dutton Sierra kit car (for which its designer, Richard Oakes, acknowledges the Matra’s inspiration) and even the unusual Russian ZAZ Tavria 1701 prototype.

Volanis adorned the Simca pick-up’s frame with additional fiberglass and polyester moldings to give the Rancho a tough, off-road look, assisted by hefty bumpers, an integrated roof rack and swiveling wing-top mounted long-range ‘search’ lamps. The sturdy Grand Raid trim level even came equipped with ‘off-road’ features such as a front bumper-mounted electric winch, a spare wheel mounted on the roof rack, undercarriage protection for rough tracks, as well as a limited-slip differential and matt green paint.

Using the rattily 1.5-litre push-rod 80 bhp motor from the Chrysler Alpine (Simca 1307 on the Continent), rather than the Simca 1100’s punier 55 bhp engine, the Rancho had a raised ‘command view’ seating positon so popular in today’s SUVs, but was more car-like to drive with a less ‘boneshaker; ride than the contemporary Range Rover. It also enjoyed with a more frugal thirst, but poorer performance, than the V8 Rangie, with a price tag at least 20 per cent lower, and the option of third-row rear-facing seats for the kids, which the Range Rover lacked.

Those fool-hardy enough to venture off-road quickly discovered the Rancho’s limitations, although the two-wheel-drive Matra was more capable in the rough-stuff than it had any right to be, especially with the electric winch option!

Production of the Rancho continued until late 1984, by which time 57,792 examples had been built. The model’s unlikely successor was the Matra-conceived Renault Espace, Europe’s first true MPV people carrier.

Matra’s masters at the time, Peugeot, considered the Espace concept too expensive and too risky commercially, so Matra offered the project to Renault, which launched the MPV in 1984, enjoying its pioneering spoils ever since.

Apart from inspiring the look and shape of other SUV’s, as already mentioned, the Rancho’s legacy of an off-road image without 4x4 capabilities stretched to Honda’s original and funky front-drive HR-V of 1998, marketed to a more youthful audience as the ‘Joy Machine.’

The same Rancho ‘concept’ applies to the later front-wheel-drive version of Land Rover’s current Range Rover Evoque, launched in 2011 as an ‘entry-level’ version of this hugely-successful model, aimed at those that want the look and image halo of the Evoque, but without the additional expense (£8,550 less than the equivalent 4x4 model) and higher running costs of the all-wheel-drive system.  A few rear two-wheel drive SUVs also currently exist, such as the Jaguar F-Pace and BMW’s sDrive X1 and X5, with some ‘switchable’ systems also available, as found in the Nissan X-Trail, Renault Kadjar and Seat Ateca.

I’m surprised that more SUV makers haven’t followed suit, as they’d lose nothing in terms of school-run street cred, but gain much in helping to conserve the both bank balance and environment.

Discover image by Vauxford, licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0.