Enthusiasts and entrepreneurs have attempted to launch their own car company since the early days of the auto industry. After World War II, technology became more advanced and government regulations became stricter so creating a new company became an increasingly difficult endeavor.

In spite of these and many other setbacks, in the early 1970s a Frenchman named Jean Tastevin managed to design and launch one of the most prestigious post-war French cars, the Monica 560.

Jean Tastevin was the young CEO of Compagnie Française de Matériel Ferroviaire (CFMF), a company whose main activity was building and renting cargo and passenger train cars. It wasn’t a small operation: Period magazines report that a quarter of train cars circulating around Europe at the time came out of Tastevin’s workshops.

A successful businessman, Tastevin often drove an Aston Martin to work and kept a Facel Vega for when he needed to travel with his family. When Facel Vega went belly up in 1964, Tastevin switched to Jaguar sedans but he was unhappy with the fact that France no longer built a top-spec luxury car. It was around that time that he started mulling the idea of building his own.

In 1967, Tastevin opened up shop next to the CFMF factory in Balbigny, a small village located in the rural Loire department of central France, and started drafting up ideas for an ultra luxurious car capable of transporting an entire family with brio. He recruited Chris Lawrence to help design the car, which he decided to name Monica after his wife Monique.

Lawrence had gained a substantial amount of experience in the auto industry by working on projects such as the Mini Marcos. He started by designing a light and rigid frame for the Monica and quickly turned his attention to the engine. To save money on developing an entirely new unit, the sedan was fitted with a belt-driven V8 that was designed by Ted Martin. Originally slated for use in a Formula 1 car, the engine debuted in 1965 as a 2.0-liter unit but it never saw a race track. For use in the Monica, its displacement was increased to 3.4 liters and it was fitted with four double-barrel Weber carburetors, enabling it to make 240 horsepower at 6,000 rpms.

The first functional prototype came out in 1968 and turned out to be a massive disappointment for Tastevin. Not only did it look like an overgrown Panhard CD, its proportions were a little off-kilter because the car reportedly went straight from a blueprint to a prototype, bypassing several key steps in order to cut costs and buy time. To make matters worse, the F1-derived engine was deemed a little too sophisticated and not gutsy enough to use in a big sedan. In Martin’s defense, the Monica was much heavier than anyone had anticipated a year earlier.

A second prototype was quickly hacked together but it was still not up to Tastevin’s expectations so the entrepreneur hired a young Romanian designer named Tony Rascanu to start over from the beginning. Rascanu had received formidable training in Bertone’s workshop but the task at hand was Herculean nonetheless: he had to give the car a new body without making any modifications whatsoever to Lawrence’s chassis.

A scale model based on Rascanu’s sketches was sent to Vignale in Italy where a third body was built. Unfortunately, Alfredo Vignale died in 1969 and his company was sold so Tastevin crossed the English Channel and commissioned Airflow Streamlines to build four more prototypes.

In July of 1972, French magazine Auto-Journal ran a well-research story about Tastevin and the Monica. During the course of a long interview, Tastevin explained that he hoped to build about 400 cars a year and sell them for about 80,000 francs a piece, which would have made the Monica one of the most expensive four-door sedans in France. He added that anywhere between 100 and 120 examples of the projected annual production would stay in France and be sold through a network of around 20 dealers while the rest would be exported around Europe. These plans were ambitious but realistic.

A near-production ready prototype made its public debut at the 1972 Paris Motor Show and was generally well-received. It still featured Martin’s V8 engine but it was plagued with miscellaneous mechanical issues that engineers had a hard time getting rid of.

In March of 1973, Tastevin abandoned Martin’s V8 and fitted the Monica with a Chrysler-sourced 5.9-liter V8 which was quickly replaced by a 5.6-liter unit. The engine’s pistons and valvetrain were designed specifically for the Monica while the heads underwent heavy modifications. The finishing touch was a Monica logo prominently stamped into both valve covers.

After several minor tweaks and countless hours of tests, Tastevin presented the final version of the car at the 1973 Paris Motor Show. By that point it had been given a real name: Monica 560. It was a long and sleek four-door sedan with four seats that measured 194 inches (495 centimeters) long, 71 inches (182 centimeters) wide and 56 inches (143 centimeters) tall. It tipped the scale at 4,078 pounds (1,850 kilos).

The 560 had a very luxurious interior that was appointed with wood and chrome trim all around, power windows and air conditioning. Wool carpeting came standard and buyers could choose between three different types of leather. The instrumentation included a tachometer, a speedometer displayed in both miles and kilometers and oil and temperature gauges.

In the engine bay was the aforementioned 5.6-liter Chrysler-sourced V8, a mill which made 280 horsepower at 5,000 rpms and 329 lb-ft. of torque at 4,000 rpms, sending the car to a top speed of roughly 150 mph (240 km/h). That said, it was not designed to be a sports car and Tastevin openly admitted that he no plans to field it in competition. In retrospect, the Monica 560 was the Mercedes-Benz CLS of the 1970s.

The Chrysler V8 came bolted to a 5-speed manual transmission with overdrive that was built by ZF. A five-speed unit with longer gears to eliminate the need for an overdrive and a three-speed Torqueflite automatic were both offered as an option. Power was sent to the rear wheels regardless of which transmission was chosen.

The Monica came standard with disc brakes all around, 14-inch alloy wheels mounted on Michelin tires and an advanced independent suspension system. The car was very well received by both the show-going public and the press and Tastevin promised that production would begin shortly.

On October 16th, 1973, the members of OPEC announced that they were going to raise the price of oil to $5.11 a barrel, a jaw-dropping increase of 70 percent which sent shockwaves throughout Europe and the United States. The oil embargo by itself would not have killed the 560 but it had several side effects in France that spelled a premature end for the big sedan.

Citing the rising death toll on French roads, the government imposed a 100 km/h (62 mph) speed limit on all roads that were not classified as a highway in June of 1973. The law was heavily criticized but the protests did not stop the government from taking things a step further in December of 1973 when the speed limit was changed to 90 km/h (55 mph) on expressways and 120 km/h (75 mph) on highways. The changes were blamed on the oil crisis.

Over the next year, the government continued to play musical traffic signs and the limit on the highway went up to 140 km/h (86 mph) and then down again to 130 km/h (80 mph), the limit which has stuck throughout the years.

The newly-instated speed limit was strictly enforced and it discouraged many buyers from paying a princely sum to get behind the wheel of a powerful car such as the Monica 560, the Citroën SM or the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL, especially since these cars were heavily taxed. Tastevin nonetheless soldiered on and started production in Balbigny in early 1974. The car was displayed with a 164,000-franc price tag at the 1974 Geneva Motor Show and again at the 1974 Paris Motor Show, an annual event at the time. That same year a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL retailed for 104,000 francs, an Iso Fidia for 120,000 francs and a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow carried a base price of 165,000 francs.

Many buyers were reluctant to spend such a hefty sum on a car that they had never heard of before, especially since the 560 was aimed at a segment where brand recognition is almost as important as the quality of the car. This exact same problem all but slaughtered the Volkswagen Phaeton in the United States and in Europe several years ago.

Discouraged by slow sales linked to several distinctly different problems that could not easily be remedied, Tastevin threw in the towel in February of 1975. How many Monica 560s were built is a point of debate among automotive historians but most agree that about 17 regular-production models came out of the Balbigny workshop.

A majority of the facts, figures and photos found in this article come from period issues of Auto-Journal magazine.