Simca Sevitame

The Simca Sevitame was an off-road motorcycle designed for the French army in the late 1930s and built by Simca in a short pre-series in early 1940. The Sevitame company was created only to produce this one model. The first prototype appeared in 1937, an improved Sevitame B with a 330 cm3 engine was shown in October 1938, and the army adopted the machine in 1939 and ordered 3,000 from Simca. Its engine, designed by Marcel Violet, was a very quiet two-stroke in-line twin with the pistons working head down and the crankshaft above them. The frame came apart in three pieces, the fuel tank doubled as a mudguard over the rear wheel and the final drive was by shaft. The pre-series disappointed, the Peugeot TT112 proved far better, and the project was abandoned after only ten to fifteen machines had run.