The Monica affair...

Posted by John Mellberg January 17, 2021

The Monica affair...

As it turns out, making cars is hard. Of the many who try their hand a rarified few actually succeed. Whether it's luck, raw talent and charisma, or ample finances that decide their fate is hard to say. Sometimes even the best talents and money aren't enough.

One such ambitious individual was Jean Tastevin, heir to successful manufacturer of mining and railway equipment established by his father Arnaud in the 1930's. He also had an engineering degree from the École centrale de Paris.

Jean took the helm of the company in 1955 and rebranded it, naming it "Compagnie Française de Produits Métallurgiques" (CFPM). This roughly translates to "French Metallurgic Products Company", which doesn't sound nearly as good. Under Jean's leadership, the company was quite successful, growing to employ 400 people.

Jean was also an automobile enthusiast and owned many sports and grand touring cars. Among his favorite marques was Facel Vega, a prestigious French maker of
high-performance luxury GT's. He had been a regular customer of theirs until they shuttered their operation in 1964. After that he opted for a Jaguar, but lamented being unable to buy a French-made car of that caliber.

Monique Tastevin with the car that bore her name

It wasn't long before Jean took matters into his own hands. Under the guise of diversifying the family business, he decided he would start his own automotive venture 1966. With his longtime assistant, Henri Szykowksi, he enlisted the services of automotive engineer and racing driver Chris Lawrence's company, Lawrence Tune Engines. The car would be called the Monica, named after Tastevin's wife (at the time) Monique.

The first chassis and the jig to produce it were built together. Lawrence laid out a chassis with a central tunnel made of four square-section 18 gauge steel tubes with extensive cross-bracing. Space within the tunnel was filled with expanded polyurethane foam to add even more stiffness and sound-proofing.

The front suspension used very tall uprights with coil-over-damper units, wheel spindles on one side, a short stub axle extending inwards on the other. Rocker-style upper arms and wide-based wishbones, made of a one-piece wishbone, and a radius arm tied it all together.

The rear suspension was a De Dion system with coil springs, two parallel leading links on each side and a Panhard rod. Steering was rack-and-pinion, mounted at the same level as the upper front wishbone.

Braking was provided by a dual-circuit, power-assisted, Lockheed & Girling system with 12-inch vented disks, attached to the stub-axle on the front upright (for purposes of cooling) and 10-inch solid disk brakes, mounted inboard at the rear.

Originally, the Monica was to be powered by a Lawrence Tune/Standard-Triumph engine but that motor was slated to be discontinued in 1967. Chris Lawrence put Tastevin in touch with Edward C. "Ted" Martin, who had designed an engine that Lawrence thought would work well in the Monica.

The LawrenceTune/Standard-Triumph
engine, seen here in a Morgan +4

After evaluating the engine Tastevin bought the design, rights and existing tooling for Martin's engine. It was an all-alloy V8, weighing just 230 lbs. with ancillaries, and produced 270 bhp. The engine was used in the Pearce-Martin F1 car as well as some of Lawrence's own Deep Sanderson sports and racing cars.

During the development of the second prototype, powered by the new engine, Tastevin asked Lawrence to deliver it to the workshop of Virgilio Conrero in Turin, Italy. The famous Alfa mechanic was to do a detailed assessment of the Martin engine.

Conrero's report was scathing but proved to be based on false data. Lawrence suspected Conrero's motive was to take over his role in the project. Tastevin confronted Conrero with this information, then fired him. However, this would not be the end of the engine debacle.

Another sub-contractor would ultimately be needed to supply the engines. Two possibilities presented themselves, Coventry Victor and Rolls-Royce. Given that they'd just idled an engine plant, due to losing a contract, Lawrence thought Rolls might be a good fit. Their response to the Martin engine, which had some inspiration from their own Merlin, was very positive but the deal fell through.

Coventry Victor also bowed out of talks, so Lawrence set about establishing a machine shop at Lawrence Tune Engines able to produce the engines. However, problems continued with suppliers of various castings, prompting Lawrence to lean on Tastevin's industry contacts in France for assistance. A company called Montupet saved the day, but the Monica's engine saga was not over...

The original Monica prototype, styled by Maurice Gomm

The story of how the Monica's lovely coachwork came to be was an equally troubled affair.

Bodywork for the first prototype was designed and fabricated by Maurice Gomm. This iteration was very different in appearance from the subsequent prototypes, as well as the production models, and was compared to an oversized Panhard CD. Tastevin and his wife Monique were not pleased by its appearance and enlisted Williams & Pritchard, who produced a body for the second prototype in aluminum.

This design was closer to the eventual production version but Tastevin did request some last-minute changes to the shape, which weren't to be found in the later prototypes. Nonetheless, the design set the tone for what followed. This second car was registered as a Deep Sanderson and, after its use as a development mule, was used by team member Colin James as a personal car. It was later acquired by Peter Dodds, another member of the Monica team.

The second Monica prototype, by Williams & Pritchard

To assist in further refining the design, Tastevin hired former Vignale shop manager Tony Rascanu to oversee production of a full scale model and tooling. French coach-builder Henri Chapron and his team were employed for the task and worked under Rascanu at their facilities in Paris. Their work met Tastevin's approval and the model was delivered to Carrozzeria Alfredo Vignale, in Turin, to be used as a buck to produce a body in steel.

Upon completion of the first steel body, mounted on prototype #3, the Tastevins weren't entirely satisfied. Though a significant improvement over the earlier iterations, it did not meet their standards. The performance of the car was also disappointing, due to it being almost 500lbs overweight. As it turned out, Vignale had used a fair amount of lead as a filler in the bodywork which contributed significantly to the problem. Amid the controversy, Vignale sold his company to DeTomaso in December 1969. He died three days later in an automobile accident at the wheel of a Maserati.

The Vignale Monica prototype (#3)

With Vignale out of the picture, Lawrence was tasked with finding another contractor to produce the bodies. He initially approached Jensen, in the UK, since they were already working with Sunbeam, Volvo, and Austin-Healey. However, they lacked the capacity. So a company named Airflow Streamline in Luton, which specialized in producing aluminum cabs for trucks, was chosen. Airflow merely required a complete set of engineering drawings, a chassis and the number of body panels that would needed. Chassis #4 and #6 were delivered to Airflow Streamline and Rascanu was installed there to supervise the production of the necessary drawings.

Months went by and Airflow Streamline was still without their technical drawings and was not getting any information out of Paris. Sadly, it turned out that Rascenu had died in 1970 before being able to complete the drawings. So, Lawrence intervened and got things moving again. The car they would produce, prototype #4, would be Lawrence's favorite Monica of all.

David Coward was hired from Autocar magazine where he was working as an illustrator. Prior to that he had worked at coachbuilder James Young. Coward refined Rascanu's design by lowering the side window line and deepening the windscreen to give the car a more contemporary appearance. The body was also lowered three inches between the floor pan and the roof and four inches were added to the width.

Eventually the technical drawings were completed and approved by Tastevin, which Lawrence delivered to another Turinese company, Abbate Spa., along with prototype #4 so that production of the body panels could begin, using a resin/steel hybrid tooling method which they had developed for low volume manufacturing.

A preproduction, Martin V8 powered, Monica 350 prototype

Comparisons have been drawn between the final shape of the Monica and many of its contemporaries such as the Maserati Indy and Lotus Elan +2, as well as certain aspects of the Ferrari 365 GT 2+2 and Aston Martin DBS. However, it was tastefully executed and quite well received by the motoring press.

Meanwhile, despite Lawrence's efforts and the assistance of Coventry Victor, the Monica's engine debacle continued. The Lawrence Tune motor proved to be inadequate to the task of moving their hefty luxury GT and new options needed to be considered. Supplier issues also continued to affect the project. In response, Tastevin elected to abandon the bespoke motor and sent Lawrence to America in search of a new engine supplier.

Ford and General Motors were approached, but the new engine was sourced from Chrysler in the end. The chosen motivation was the 5.6-liter "340" Chrysler LA series V8. To handle the extra weight of the Monica's new engine, power-steering was added and the rear axle was beefed up. Chrysler shipped the engines with an air-conditioning compressor, so that feature was also added. New motor mounts and some additional vents in bodywork were added for cooling purposes.

A Monica prototype on public display in Paris

The car would make its debut at the Salon de l'Auto show in Paris in October 1971. As the event preceded the engine contract with Chrysler, the car on display was powered by a Martin V8 and dubbed the "Monica 350". Tastevin arranged to have a car raised to the tenth floor of a Paris hotel the day before the show, and then have it moved over to the Salon, where the car was received enthusiastically.

In order to accommodate "Continental speeds", the Monica's Chrysler engine were specially tuned by (American performance parts supplier) Racer Brown. Modifications to the engines included a Racer Brown stage 3 road camshaft with hydraulic lifters, an Edelbrock Torquer intake manifold, a 4-barrel Holly carburetor, a Chrysler marine specification oil pump, Clevite shell bearings, Forge True pistons, Marine specification valves, and a Felpro race-quality gasket set. These modifications delivered nearly 300bhp and over 300 lb-ft of torque.

The revised and renamed Monica 560 made its world premier at the Geneva Auto Show in March 1973. The car was priced at $34,000 which, at the time, was only slightly less than a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow. After the Geneva show Tastevin invited several racing drivers and automotive journalists to Paul Ricard's circuit, Le Castellet, to evaluate the new Chrysler-powered car. Among those there was driver/journalist Paul Frère, whom Tastevin invited to "lend a hand" in sorting out the car's handling. It would appear again at the Paris Auto Show in October of the same year.

The Monica, in production form

A rapid succession of prototypes would be built to finalize the car. The cars teste at Le Castellet were prototype numbers 8 and 9. The 10th and 11th were built for crash-testing and numbers 12, 13 and 14 came after. Prototype 14 was basically a pre-production model and would end up being one of the cars Tastevin kept for his personal use.
With the long and tumultuous development effort finally over, production got underway at Tastevin's newly set up assembly line in Balbigny, France.

The final articles were built with a tubular steel and Sheetmetal chassis, per Lawrence's design. His rocker-arm/De Dion suspension was automatically leveling, and the car sat on 14 inch alloy wheels shod with Michelin 215/70VR-14 tires. The Chrysler 350 "LA Series" V8, tuned by Racer Brown, provided the requisite motivation. The production bodywork was the late Rascanu's design with Coward's revisions executed entirely in steel.

Five exterior colors were available: Atlantic Blue, Azure Blue, Purple Amaranth, Chestnut Brown and Beige Sand. The interior was upholstered in Connolly leather, available in three colors: Marine, Havana, and Champagne. The floor was carpeted in Shetland wool, while the dashboard was finished in Carpathian Elm and suede.

The Monica 560's interior

Other amenities included dual-zone air-conditioning with controls for front and rear passengers, power windows, a high-fidelity sound system, a complete set of custom fitted luggage, and electrically operated doors designed to open and close silently at the touch of a button.

With a quoted top speed of 150 mph, the Monica 560 could lay claim to being "The fastest sedan in the world" at the time. However, all of this refinement and performance was not enough to overcome the external factors looming over the venture. As if its gestation hadn't been dramatic enough, with the deaths of Rascanu and Vignale and a revolving door of sub-contractors, the car was introduced to a world that no longer wanted it.

The Monica was born amid the Oil Crisis of the 1970's and the economic malaise that followed in its wake. Its Rolls Royce price and relative lack of pedigree, compared to many of its peers, did little to help matters. Many similar specialty car makers fell by the wayside during this era or were swallowed up by larger firms. Thus the Monica 560 made its last public appearance at the Paris Auto Salon in October 1974. By February of 1975 Tastevin announced the cessation of production and closed the company.

The Monica 560 in profile

Numbers vary from one source to the next, but it seems that about 22 cars were finished and registered with the Chrysler V8, 17 of which were delivered to customers with the remainder being pre-production prototypes. An additional dozen of the early Martin engine prototypes are said to have been made as well. As many as 20 cars were left unfinished at the factory and were sold to Ligier, another low volume French carmaker, owned by the noted F1 driver Guy Ligier. Most of those ending up being crushed in the early ‘80s after their sojourn in Ligier’s back lot.

Making cars is hard.

Despite Jean Tastevin's ambition and considerable financial resources the Monica affair ended in failure. The talents of men like Alfredo Vignale, Tony Rascanu, and Chris Lawrence weren't enough. Nor, was the sheer beauty and artisanal craftsmanship of the finished product.

Though the protracted development driven by Tastevin's perfectionism, didn't help matters, it was the geopolitics of the day that caused the demise of the Monica. Not much really separated Jean Tastevin from those who succeeded in their car-making ambitions, men like Enzo Ferrari or Ferdinand Porsche who persevered despite similar pitfalls. It could be said that Tastevin had some considerable advantages over his peers by virtue of his wealth, education, and connections. Those other people of note just had better luck.

Today, six production examples of the Monica are known to exist and three of the prototypes are said to reside in the UK.

Sources:
Automobile Sportive
The Petrol Stop

Curbside Classic