Hello guys! I am Paul Parlea (the creator of this mod) and this is my first post on the forum (albeit being registered for years now).
I will clarify some aspects concerning the De Simon history and, to a lesser extent, the Rocar history as a manufacturer.
In 1992, there was a need to come up with a more modern bus than what was produced at the time (the morally outdated
DAC 112UDM/
DAC 117UD introduced in 1979 which carried over from the
German-licensed Roman 112UD from 1975). As a result, Rocar wanted to buy a license from a foreign manufacturer. The De Simon coachbuilder from Italy came up with a range of urban and suburban buses based on MAN chassis. Out of thesse proposed models, only the UL70 Starbus model (see attachment 1) was finally bought.
The Romanian production would commence in 1996, and Italian sourced components will be gradually replaced with Romanian ones.
Many people have said that the De Simon (or Inbus U210, as it is known in Italy) resembles the Berliet/Renault PR100, but they're wrong. The Italian model was designed by Andrea Pininfarina in 1979 (see photo 2) and facelifted in mid 80s such that it looked like the first Rocars.
Someone said that the front end looks like an Yugoslavian Ikarus, but those were designed with a Berliet inspiration in mind in early 80s.
Rocar De Simon could've been a good transition model from the 112UDM to the U812 Autodromo (of which sadly only one prototype was made), but it carried on until 2003, when the company went bankrupt due to mismanagement and ill-willness from the board and government altogether (just to mention, Mercedes-Benz was interested in buying the production facility in Bucharest in 1996, but the Romanian direction refused because, I joke you not, "we won't sell our country to capitalist thieves!"). Ironically, the 112UDM/117UD and their trolleybus versions (
212E and
217E) would be produced in parallel with the De Simon until 2000 (117UD until 1998 in very limited numbers, though).