Originally posted by Spgeti
.....the Smica V8 which is a Flattie and a Ford V8 60 from what I have been told.
Essentially it was...
The progression from the V8/60 (US production) was that the design was sent to England for production there, bearing in mind 'rated HP' taxation issues. Some minor changes were made in British production then the design went to Ford France.
There a number of other changes were made and it was increased in size by about 100cc. Ford France then sold out to Simca, who continued with it before Chrysler took over and a few years down the track Chrysler sent the tooling to Brazil for their branch there to work with. More improvements took place.
And into the mid-sixties they bought the rights to the ARDUN heads and made a few models with no inlet or exhaust ports in the block and using the ARDUN designed heads. As pictured above.
When Simca took over Ford France there were existing long-term contracts for the supply of trucks to the French military with the regular-sized Ford side-valve V8. Chrysler continued to honour these contracts, so on one side of the Atlantic Chrysler were still building their own side-valve sixes for military use and the other they were building side-valve Ford V8s for military use - both well into the sixties!