Monica was a brand of luxury cars created in France in the 1970s by Jean Tastevin, a French industrialist whose wife's name was Monica.

Monica was the last attempt (after Facel Vega

Facel Vega

Facel was a French manufacturer of automobiles from 1954 to 1964.The company was named after the original metal stamping company FACEL, and the company's first model, the Vega, named after the star, was introduced at the 1954 Paris Auto Show...

) to create a luxury brand in France. Its only French competitor was the Citroën SM Opéra, the sedan which was built by Chapron

Henri Chapron

Henri Chapron was a prominent French automobile coachbuilder. His atelier, created in 1919, was located in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret....

.

Although intended to be built in France, design, development and prototype building was entrusted to Chris Lawrence at C.J. Lawrence Consultants of Hammersmith

Hammersmith

Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...

, London, England. The 4-door, 4-seat saloon featured a De Dion rear suspension. Final styling and trimming was by David Coward, -ex James Young

James Young (coachbuilder)

James Young Ltd was a British coachbuilding company. The business was started in 1863 in LondonRoad, Bromley. originally producing horsedrawn carriages....

 (coachbuilders) and Motor magazine

Motor magazine

MOTOR is an Australian motoring magazine published monthly by ACP Magazines. MOTOR is Australia's premiere performance car publication, with two major crowns for automotive manufacturers: 'Performance Car of The Year' and 'Bang For Your Bucks'....

.

The earliest prototype Monicas were powered by a Ted Martin designed 3.4l V8 engine but later prototypes and the production model were equipped with a Chrysler 5.6 l (340 in³) V8 engine. Advertised transmission options were the Chrysler Torqueflite

TorqueFlite

TorqueFlite is the trademarked name of Chrysler Corporation's automatic transmissions, starting with the three-speed unit introduced late in the 1956 model year as a successor to Chrysler's two-speed PowerFlite...

 system or a ZF 5-speed manual gear box.

The styling and prototype body mouldings were produced by Bob Curl in Hastings.Several show cars were repainted after the Motor Show by John Drew, from the Bristol area, after the owner had seen his work for Bristol Cars

Bristol Cars

Bristol Cars is a manufacturer of hand-built luxury cars headquartered in Patchway, near Bristol, United Kingdom. Bristol have always been a low-volume manufacturer; the most recent published official production figures were for 1982, which stated that 104 cars were produced in that year...

 at the show. John was then invited over to the factory to advise on production of the Monica, and recalls that, as many different nationalities were represented on the workforce, any production problem would result in heated multilingual discussions.

The Monica 560 was presented at the Salon de Paris 1972 and production began in 1973 at a facility located in Balbigny

Balbigny

Balbigny is a commune in the Loire department in central France.-History:Balbigny owes its name to a Roman general named Balbinius who based himself here in order to conduct a war. Nothing survives from this period...

, Loire. Only 8 production cars (as well as 22 prototype

Prototype

A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...

s) were completed before the factory closed in 1974, a victim of the 1973 oil crisis

1973 oil crisis

The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...

.

A plan by Panther Westwinds

Panther Westwinds

Panther Westwinds was a manufacturer of niche sports cars and luxury cars, based in Surrey, United Kingdom. Founded in 1972 by Robert Jankel, the Panther company enjoyed success throughout the 1970s with retro-styled cars based on the mechanical components of standard production cars from other...

to resume production in England was announced in March 1975 but never implemented.