Matra — the aerospace group that built the Bagheera and the Espace

Matra at a glance

Aircraft, missiles and a move into cars

Matra was established in 1945 and began work on a twin-engined propeller aircraft. In 1951 an aircraft with a Matra-built engine was the first in Europe to break the sound barrier in level flight. In 1961 Matra became the first prime contractor for European satellites. In 1963 Jean-Luc Lagardère was appointed chief executive of a company with 1,450 workers.

The step into cars came in 1964, when Matra bought Automobiles René Bonnet, a small maker of sports cars. The Matra article gives 1963 in its car section. The firm became the base of Matra's car division.

The 530 and the racing years

Matra's first own design, the M530, appeared at the Geneva Motor Show on 7 March 1967. It was designed by Philippe Guédon, a former Simca designer, with a body styled by Jacques Nochet. The car had a targa roof and a Ford Taunus V4 engine mounted in the middle. The first version had 54.4 kW (74 PS), and the M530 A of 1969 had 58.2 kW (79 PS). Giovanni Michelotti redesigned the car in 1970 as the LX. A total of 9,609 were built from 1967 to 1973.

At the same time Matra became a serious racing team. Equipe Matra Sports entered French Formula 3 in 1965, and Matra was a Formula One constructor from 1967 to 1972. In 1969 it won both the drivers' and the constructors' championships. Later its sports prototypes won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright in 1972, 1973 and 1974. Matra withdrew from motor sport at the end of 1974.

Matra-Simca: Bagheera, Rancho and Murena

In the early 1970s Matra sold its car division to Chrysler Europe, the owner of Simca.

The Bagheera was unveiled to the press at Lake Annecy on 14 April 1973 and shown to the public at the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year. It had a mid-mounted Simca engine and a remarkable seating layout: three seats side by side, a driver's seat plus a two-place bench. The 19 body panels were made of glass-fibre-reinforced polyester on a pressed-steel chassis. Engines were the 1,294 cc Simca unit with 62.6 kW (84 hp) and, in the S, the 1,442 cc unit from the Simca 1308 GT with 67.1 kW (90 hp).

The steel chassis had almost no rust protection, and many cars corroded badly. A prototype with an eight-cylinder "U" engine made from two Simca blocks was not approved by Chrysler, and only three were built. Production ended in April 1980 after 47,802 cars.

The Rancho of 1977 was a different idea: a leisure vehicle in the style of the Range Rover, built on the front structure and stretched chassis of the Simca 1100 pick-up. It used a 1,442 cc engine with 59 kW (80 hp), and 57,792 were built until 1984.

The Murena replaced the Bagheera in November 1980. It kept three seats but had a fully galvanised chassis, the first production car with galvanised steel for every chassis part:

Production ended in July 1983, when the factory changed over to a new kind of car.

The Renault Espace

The Espace began in the 1970s as an idea of Fergus Pollock at Chrysler UK. Matra developed it for Simca, which was then part of Chrysler, to sell as a Talbot. PSA Peugeot Citroën, which had bought Chrysler's European business in 1978, judged it "too expensive and too risky a design to put into production". Matra took the design, called P23, to Renault. In 1983 Lagardère bought the car division back, and a partnership with Renault followed.

Renault launched the Espace in July 1984. Only nine were sold in the first month, but it went on to become a long-running success. Matra built the first three generations at Romorantin:

The Espace IV of November 2002 was the first one developed and built entirely by Renault.

Avantime and the end of Matra Automobiles

Matra's last car was the Renault Avantime, which went into production in 2001. It sold poorly. On 27 February 2003 Matra Automobiles, declared bankrupt, announced that the Romorantin factory would close a month later.

In September 2003 Pininfarina bought Matra's engineering, testing and prototype businesses, which became Matra Automobile Engineering. Pininfarina sold its stake to Segula Technologies on 13 January 2009. The aerospace side had already moved on: Matra Hautes Technologies merged with Aérospatiale in February 1999, and Aérospatiale-Matra became part of EADS, now Airbus, on 10 July 2000.

The Matra models listed on 1cars are in the Matra catalogue, and the three-seat sports car has its own page on the Matra Bagheera. The partner brand is in the Simca catalogue, with the Simca 1000. The people carrier Matra built for Renault is covered on the Renault Espace generations page and in the history of Renault.

Matra timeline

Landmark Matra models

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