page_title: PSA Poissy Plant
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: PSA Poissy Plant / History
caption_attribution_description: Original image description from the Deutsche Fotothek Weltfestpielteilnehmer fahren auf der Ladefläche eines LKWs durch die Straßen Berlins English: Poissy built Ford truck of prewar design but probably built in the late 1940s following the liberation of France. The truck was introduced as a Matford in the late 1930s, but by 1940 the Mathis/Ford (ie Matford) partnership had run into the sands, amid much litigation, and postwar French built Ford trucks were badged as Fords.
context_page_description: The PSA Poissy plant is a French car plant belonging to Groupe PSA located in Poissy, Yvelines. It is dedicated to the manufacturer's Platform 1 cars, which are cars in the subcompact class, with an annual output of approximately 200,000 cars.
  In 2010 the plant produced the Peugeot 207, the Peugeot 207 SW and the Citroën DS3. Together with the PSA Research Centres at Carrières-sous-Poissy and at Vélizy, it is one of three major establishments that PSA runs in the department.
  The Poissy plant was commissioned by Ford France in 1937 and opened in 1940 a few weeks before the German invasion.
  When, in 1954, Ford sold their business to Simca, the Poissy plant was naturally included in the deal, and less than ten years later Simca closed their existing plant at Nanterre, leaving Poissy as their only significant auto-production facility. Ownership passed again in 1963, this time to Chrysler who in that year acquired a controlling interest in Simca. Then in 1978 Peugeot acquired Chrysler's European business. Former Simca models were rebadged as Talbots and continued to be produced at the Poissy plant during the early 1980s.
context_section_description: The construction of the Poissy plant was the project of Maurice Dollfus, Ford's dynamic boss in France.  In 1932 governments had responded to economic contraction by raising tariff barriers and Ford had responded to the need to source vehicles locally by entering into an agreement, in 1934, with the Strasbourg-based Mathis company to produce Ford-designed cars, which would be branded as Matfords, in an extended Strasbourg plant.   Ford brought cash to the deal and a fractious partnership ensued, Mathis having found themselves obliged to abandon production of their own cars in October 1934. For Dollfus the Poissy plant, commissioned in 1938, would provide a route away from the by now bitterly litigious Matford relationship.   Construction began on a large 240,000 m2 site bordering the River Seine in Poissy at the start of November 1938 and progressed remarkably rapidly, with the plant formally completed on 1 May 1940.   Located a short distance downstream from Paris along the (here fully navigable) River Seine, Poissy was near to Asnières, which was home to Chausson, at that time a car body producer and principal supplier to Ford France.   The site was also adjacent to the main railway line connecting Paris with Le Havre.
  The principal product to be produced at Poissy was to be closely based on the Matford “Alsace” V8, itself a version of the existing US 3622 cc Ford Model 48 but with a restyled rear.  The overall silhouette of the car closely resembled that of the Ford Pilot which was produced for a few years by Ford of Britain from 1947.  The other car to be built at Poissy was the Matford Alsace V8 13CV, which had a smaller 2158 cc engine.  It looked virtually identical to the larger engined car, though was actually slightly shorter.  These cars had started life in 1935 as products of the Matford joint venture, but the cars produced at Ford's new Poissy plant would presumably have been badged as Fords.  The plant became operational in the late Spring of 1940 and there was therefore very little time in which to produce anything before the débacle of May 1940. On 14 June 1940 Poissy was occupied by the German Army: under conditions of occupation the plant concentrated on light trucks.  As the war dragged on there was a move, in 1943,  to crate up Ford's newly completed Poissy plant for shipment to the company's Cologne location, but this was blocked, apparently due to the intervention of a recently resigned but still influential former Vichy government minister called François Lehideux.      Seven years later, in 1950, Lehideux replaced Maurice Dollfus at the top of Ford's French operation.
  Poissy was liberated by the Americans on 26 August 1944 after several days of bombardment and civilian casualties, notably on 18 August. Ford's boss, Maurice Dollfus was promptly arrested on suspicion of collaboration and transferred to Drancy.  However, his release came quite quickly and the plant switched to supporting the allied war effort.  Initially the government mandated Poissy to produce the light trucks that it had been produced before the war, and in 1946 production commenced of the Ford F698W 5 ton truck known as the “Poissy”.   Also in 1946, Poissy reverted to producing the smaller engined 2,225 cc V-8 engined Matford based model, albeit with improved suspension and brakes.  The car was known in France as the Ford 13CV, although subsequently it is also called more formally the Ford F-472 and, after the first 300 had been produced, the Ford F-472A.   The 4,270 cars produced in 1947 were well short of Ford's ambitions for the new plant ten years earlier, but with basic materials in short supply and customers short of money, in the late 1940s none of the French auto-makers experienced a rapid return to pre-war volumes.
  In much of industry, including the auto-industry, the immediate post-war years were characterised by industrial unrest, and Ford's Poissy plant was badly affected.  Nevertheless, in October 1948 the North American designed Ford Vedette, still powered by the company's familiar V8 2158cc engine, made its first ap
caption: Matford F917WS (ca 1942)
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