Winning the COTY award in 1976 was a huge shot in the arm for the new Simca 1307/1308, better known to us Brits as the Chrysler Alpine. Just three years later the Chrysler Horizon beat the Fiat Ritmo (Strada in the UK!) to achieve the same accolade, which might be seen as less of a success, although in that year the Audi 80 was in third place. Without casting aspersions on Chrysler Europe's best efforts of that decade, it is always interesting to look at a list of COTY winners and observe just how many soon ended up in the dustbin of history.
As is well known to many, the Chrysler Corporation in the USA were in expansionary mode in the 1960s. Ford and General Motors had long since established subsidiaries in the UK and Europe, so Chrysler felt bound to do the same as one of the Big Three, eager to reap the profits available in the
