They also made a walk behind model, for which they obtained a sublicense from A. Grunder & Co. It was powered by a Motosacoche (later MAG) twin cylinder V-engine, watercooled and with 12 hp output. Several of these tillers are known to have survived in England. Although serial production could almost be started, these heavy, unwieldy machines nearly ruined the company "La Précision". To make matters even worse, both leading engineers Fäsch and De Saugy died shortly one after another around 1920.

Management of "La Précision" was taken over by Mr. Léon Dufour, former technical and managing director of the Piccard & Pictet car company. The company name, which reminded of weapons production, was no longer considered appropriate to recommend the new agricultural products. Léon Dufour firstly pended the new company name Société Industrielle de Machines Agricoles Rotatives SA (Industrial company for rotatative agricultural machinery), in short SIMAR SA, located in Geneva.

The new company ceased the development of the heavy and expensive tiller tractors, and turned towards wieldier and cheaper machines. They started researching the needs of the future buyers, before producing anything. During the summer of 1922 production was moved to the Chemin de Lancy, still in Geneva.

Neither pains nor expense were spared to develope a small walk behind tiller which would draw a large number of customers. The target could be reached by means of the construction of small two stroke engines ("Grunder-system"), cooled by a fan on the flywheel. These finally gave the sought-after results. From 1927 till 1931 over 2500 SIMAR C2 tillers were delivered, and even 3000 during 1932 and 1933.

The German company Siemens-Schuckert obtained the manufacturing rights and also placed a large order for finished SIMAR-tillers. These were sold in Germany under the Siemens brand, while they made the larger model theirselves. Because Siemens later sold their tillers department to Bungartz of Munich, SIMAR stopped their exports to Germany half way the 1930's. Bungartz made their own tillers, the Bungartz L3 was specially meant to replace the SIMAR.

SIMAR No. 10, with an 8 hp two stroke petrol engine. An identical tiller was sold in Germany by Siemens as their S8 or Plantagenfräse, it is not known if both companies made their own tillers.

A SIMAR No. 10 was on display at the Museum Historische Landbouwtechniek in Wageningen, Holland until it had o close down. It was restored by the Dutch importers Brinkman&Niemeyer before it was donated. Since 2008, the tiller had been added to the SIMAR collection of Diego Verschuere of Belgium.

From 1927 Mr. René Moser started factory dealerships for the SIMAR tillers in England, Italy, Australia, South Africa and the USA. His efficient marketing strategies reactivated the decreased sales in the USA, and an impressive dealer network could be formed under the Rototiller brand name. It is reported that around 1930, 28 SIMAR 8 hp tillers were used in the public gardens and parcs in New York City. SIMAR tillers were also produced under license in England (by Geo. Monro Ltd.) and the USA (by C.W. Kelsey's Rototiller company).

Against 1933 very active foreign representative René Moser returned to Geneva and aquired a stock majority of the company SIMAR SA. All patent rights remained property of Léon Dufour.

Despite the succes of the walk behind tillers, both engineers Dufour and Moser still were eager to experiment with drive-on tractors. From 1936 they made several constructions to convert a walk behind tractor into a tractor. The entire engine-gearbox-tiller part could rotate around the rear wheel axle in order to raise and sink the tiller attachment. After many different prototypes, 160 SIMAR tractors of models T100A and T100B could be made till 1955. Main problem was maintaining the correct working depth in uneven land. It would take a completely new lifting construction to solve this problem, but as the Ferguson patents would soon elapse, this seemed not worthwile. The complete history of SIMAR tractors, with many photos of the various prototypes, is described in the book Schweizer Traktorenbau, Band 3. See German version of this page for ordering details.

SIMAR kept developing and making garden tractors in many different models till 1978, over 50,000 tillers left the Geneva works.For more details on SIMAR, see Donald A. Jones' website. I have a letter dated 24 June 1985, in which a company Mégevet-SIMAR SA located in Carouge/Geneva profiles itself as a metallurgic factory specialized in surface finishing, from protoype till serial production, common mechanics, sheet metal, welding, painting, mechanical engineering, pressing jobs and gear cutting.