of the Alpine in 1976 required a complicated reorganisation of Chrysler's British assembly operations, with the Alpine replacing the Avenger at Ryton, Avenger assembly moving to Linwood replacing the Imp, Hunter, Sceptre and Rapier, and the residual Hunter assembly moving to a CKD operation in Ireland. The Avenger and Hunter were both facelifted at this time and re-badged as Chryslers. Production of the Chrysler Hunter finished in 1979 just after Peugeot took over, although the tooling was subsequently sold to Iran as the Paykan, which was built until 2005. To replace the small Hillman Imp at the under-utilised Linwood plant, the British Government provided grants for the development of the Chrysler Sunbeam (1977-81), a three-door supermini hatchback based on a shortened Avenger floorplan. In contrast to the advanced Alpine the Sunbeam was rear-wheel drive and therefore somewhat dated compared to contemporary superminis such as the Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polo, and it was rarely seen outside the UK. It was renamed the Talbot Sunbeam in 1979. The Matra Rancho (1977-84) was a leisure activity vehicle version of the Simca 1100 developed by the independent French automotive engineering firm Matra in partnership with Chrysler Europe. Although a low-volume niche model based on an ageing car, it proved to be a sales success and can be viewed as a very early example of what would now be classified as a crossover vehicle. The last new model launched before the demise of Chrysler Europe was the Chrysler Horizon (1978-87), which was also sold as the Chrysler-Simca Horizon and soon renamed the Talbot Horizon in 1979. Like the larger Alpine, the Horizon was another pan-European model built simultaneously in France, Spain and the UK (Ryton, from 1980), and it also won the European Car of the Year Award for 1979. The Horizon was a five-door front-wheel drive hatchback similar in concept to the Volkswagen Golf. Chrysler continued to make its own versions of the Horizon in its American factories after withdrawing from Europe, and production continued there until 1990. Although the preceding Simca 1100 was front-wheel drive, at the time the Horizon was launched many comparable cars were still sold as rear-wheel drive saloons, so the Chrysler/Talbot Avenger was kept in production alongside to cater for more traditional buyers. Prior to the sale of Chrysler Europe to Peugeot in 1978, Chrysler had begun development of a large flagship saloon as a replacement for the