Top Ten Trivia
Our spotlight of trivia is turned on the rear-engined Renaults from 1946-1986.
From the tiny Renault 4CV to the monstrous Renault 5 Turbo, the French company produced a wide range of rear- engined cars (technically mid- engined in the case of the R5 Turbo!) before settling on FWD as the way to go. Here are a few snippets of trivia from those years.
With the huge success of cars like the Renault 4 and Renault 5, not to mention later models like the Clio, it is easy to forget that the French company has not always been wedded to the notion of front wheel drive. Naturally enough for a company founded in 1898, the early years were dominated by cars with the engine up front and driving the rear wheels, though a radiator mounted behind the engine did give the cars a distinctive appearance until the end of the 1920s thanks to the resulting coal scuttle bonnet.
However, from 1946 until 1972 they also offered a range of rear- engined cars. As Graham Hull explains in this issue’s Marques and Models feature on the Hillman Imp, this layout was considered perfectly normal, even ideal, for small family cars until the FWD revolution took over. And it was a format that did well for Renault – the 4CV sold over a million in 15 years from 19461961, the Dauphine more than 2 million between 1956 and 1967. The sexy Floride/ Caravelle from 1959- 68 might not have been such a commercial success, but it certainly brought glamour to Renault’s small car offering, while the boxy Renault 8 and its slightly elongated cousin the Renault 10 also sold well between 1962 and 1972 before handing the small- car baton over to the FWD Renault 5 supermini. In fact, we have also included one variant of the R5 in this selection of motoring trivia from an era that deserves celebrating. So join us on a random and very selective stroll through the annals of Renault’s rear- engined legacy. 1 The 4CV was conceived as early as 1940 as a cheap, small and economical car to suit the post-war conditions. The first of the engines was running on the test bench
when the RAF bombed the Renault factories in March 1942. The factory was badly damaged and 463 workers lost their lives – but somehow the engine survived and was still running at the end of the attack. The factories were bombed again in September, but fortunately Louis Renault had had the foresight to store one of the prototypes at Herqueville in Normandy where he had a country estate, and it survived. The 4CV was painted sand yellow when presented to the press in September 1946, not through choice but because some ex-Afrika Korps paint was all the firm could get hold of. People called it the little butter pat (among other less complimentary names!), but it went on to become the first French car to sell a million examples, and it lasted all the way through until 1961. 2 Renault only built the tiny 4CV with four doors because their marketing gurus decided that few Frenchmen would buy a car with only two doors. It is unclear exactly how they came to this decision, but Renault’s new boss, Pierre Lefaucheux, was in favour of it as he was a big chap and had difficulty getting in and out of the back seat on a two- door prototype. The 4CV was also unusual in having return springs in the rack-and-pinion steering system. This kind of anti-power steering was not actually a hindrance in normal use because the car was so light, but if you let go of the wheel with the front wheels turned, they could surprise the unwary by returning very smartly of their own volition to the straightahead position. 3 In 1948, the Renault 4CV’s 760cc engine produced 19bhp@4000rpm and could propel the 522.1kg car to a top speed of 60mph. That doesn’t sound much today, but how did those figures compare with other cars on the market in 1948? Well, a Citroën 2CV weighed in at 600kg, squeezed just 9bhp from its 375ccs and was flat out at 40mph. An Austin A40 Devon had a bigger engine at 1200cc, but whilst that produced a relatively whopping 40bhp (hence the model number!), the Austin weighed a rather more substantial 1010.6kg and so top speed was still only 60mph. The 800.9kg Ford Prefect of 1948 presented figures of 1172cc, 30.1bhp and 61mph, the Morris Minor came in at 791.3kg, 918cc, 29.5bhp and 62mph, the Standard 8 (itself only a lightly warmed- over pre-war design) claimed figures of 813.6kg, 1009cc, 28bhp and 61mph, while the VW Beetle posted 720kg, 1131cc, 25bhp and 65mph. So all in all, the 4CV was bang on target for its class. 4 Pierre Lefaucheux was killed in February 1955 when driving the unloved and unlovely Renault Fregate – he skidded on ice, and his unsecured briefcase flew off the back seat and killed him with a blow to the neck. So the Dauphine was brought to production under his successor, Pierre
Dreyfus. It was initially going to be called the Corvette, until somebody realised that such a thing already existed in America. It then became the Dauphine, which means either the wife of the Dauphin (the eldest son of the ruler of the region of Dauphine) or a female dolphin. Looking at the styling, we’d opt for the latter. It became infamous in London in 1961 when Michael Gotla of Welbeck Motors bought a fleet of 200 to act as minicabs, side-stepping taxi legislation because they had to be prebooked. The experiment lasted until 1962, when the courts decided that the Dauphines were in fact ‘plying for hire.’ 5 When the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited France in 1957, they visited the Renault factories and were given a pale blue Dauphine as a gift. The car had actually been built at Acton with special leather upholstery and wire wheels, and shipped over to France for the occasion. It ended up being used first at Balmoral, and then as a pool car at Buckingham Palace. 6 The Floride/Caravelle was styled by Frua as a Coupé or Cabriolet, based on the Dauphine and intended to inject some sex appeal into the model range in preparation for an assault on the US market. The Floride name was chosen because the idea had started at a dealer convention in Florida, but since that name would have had limited appeal in other US States, it was called the Caravelle in English-speaking countries. Renault later threatened to sue BMC when the MGB was launched in 1962 because they claimed it had cribbed the Floride’s pocketed headlight arrangement. Renault’s lawyers sent a strongly-worded letter to the UK, but were told what they could do with it and the matter faded away. 7 Another potential problem that faded away concerned a Captain J Edwardes of Surbiton. He was a lecturer on tropical fish and reptiles, and used to take a caiman alligator called Trudi in a Floride with him to lectures. Unfortunately she used to slip and slide about under braking and cornering, consequently arriving at the lecture in a foul mood. Britax ended up designing a bespoke seat belt especially for her. 8 The Renault 8 was introduced in 1962, one car even being hung from a helicopter and flown past the Statue of Liberty to publicise it in the USA. It was based on the Dauphine running gear, but with a fashionable new and boxy body. The last were sold in France in 1973, but they were produced in Spain until 1976, and had also been built in Bulgaria from 1965-1970, and in Romania by Dacia from 1968-1972.
Despite being based on Dauphine running gear, the engine in the R8 was new, the Cléon- Fonte unit that would be kept in production by Dacia until 2004. 9 Originally the R8 had a five-bearing 956cc engine. It was later enlarged to 1108cc for the R8 Major of 1964, though this was replaced by the R10 Major in 1965, which had a restyled nose and tail to create a longer car with a bigger boot. The engine was later modified again to form a 1300 unit in the R10, an engine it shared with the new front- engined Renault 12. Perhaps the most famous and revered variant of the lot among enthusiasts was the R8 Gordini 1300, whose engine reached the dizzy heights of 110bhp at 6750rpm. However, the Gordini tweaks added a fair old wedge to the asking price. In 1967, the R10-1100 with its 1108cc engine cost £699 once you factored in purchase tax. However, the Renault 8 Gordini cost a whopping £1230 – making cars go faster has never been cheap! 10 Talking of going fast, we were unsure initially whether the Renault 5 Turbo should be included in this feature, but the consensus was that it deserved at least a mention. Built as a homologation special for rallying, it had a mid-mounted 1397cc Cléon- Fonte engine driving the rear wheels. Between 1978 and 1983, some 1830 of these beasts were unleashed, pumping out 158bhp in standard form. They were followed by a further 3167 Turbo 2s from 1983-1986, which were nearly as dramatic and still capable of 120mph. All were LHD, and in ultimate race trim power peaked at 390bhp – it would have taken more than 20 of the original 4CV to have mustered that kind of horsepower between them.