Celebrate the 120th anniversary of Renault, the world’s favourite French carmaker
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Renault has been building cars for almost the entire history of the motor industry. The company was founded in 1899, so you’re going to be hearing a lot about its 120th anniversary next year.
But the first Renault car predates the company. It was built in 1898, which gives us a chance to celebrate Renault’s long-running achievement now rather than wait another 12 months. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.
The Voiturette
At the age of 21, Louis Renault created his first car. Known as the Voiturette (French for ‘little car’), it used a De Dion Bouton engine but had a revolutionary new gearbox, very similar in design to the manual ones still used today, which Louis patented.
On Christmas Eve 1898, Louis drove the Voiturette up the Rue Lepic in Paris. Easy enough today, it was quite a feat for the time, and led to 12 orders being placed for replicas.
Renault Frères
Société Renault Frères was formed in 1899, with Louis concentrating on design and production while his older brothers Fernand and Marcel looked after the business side.
The Voiturette remained in production for several years, eventually reaching Type J form. Later versions had a roof, more seats and a more powerful engine.
In its early days, Renault built up a formidable reputation in motorsport. In addition to their other talents, Louis and Marcel both proved to be excellent racing drivers.
Louis alone
Marcel Renault was one of several people killed as a result of injuries sustained in various accidents during the 1903 Paris-Madrid road race, which was actually more like a rally in modern terms.
Fernand Renault later resigned from the company for health reasons (he died in 1909), leaving Louis in sole charge of the family business.
Grand Prix victory
The first ever Grand Prix race was held on public roads around Le Mans in June 1906. Renault test driver Ferenc Szisz took the lead on the third of twelve 64-mile laps and held it to the finish.
(As well as being the first winner, Szisz was also the first Hungarian Grand Prix driver. The second was Zsolt Baumgartner, who arrived in F1 97 years later.)
The 1906 car no longer exists, but Renault built a replica which has appeared in public several times in the 21st century.
Renault taxis
A year before the Grand Prix, Renault had taken an order to build 250 taxis for Paris. In 1907 it began exporting them to London.
Renault taxis from this period are known retrospectively as Taxis de la Marne because they were used by the French army to transport several thousand troops from Paris to the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914.
Other products
In addition to cars and taxis, Renault built many other types of vehicle. Before 1920, its portfolio already included buses, trucks, ambulances, railway locomotives, aircraft and tanks.
The company’s contribution to the French effort in World War I was so great that Louis was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit.
The 40CV
One of Renault’s great early models was the 40CV. Large and powerful, it was a very successful luxury car, and also impressively quick. A 40CV won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1925, and a modified version set a number of speed records.
The 40CV was replaced in 1928 by the Reinastella. Renault was quite adventurous with its model names at this time. Other cars sold in the 1930s included the Primastella, the Celtaquatre and the Vivasix.
Nationalisation and the 4CV
Louis Renault’s death in October 1944, and his activities during World War II, are subjects of controversy and confusion to this day.
The more straightforward aftermath is that the French government took over ownership of Renault in 1945, relinquishing it 51 years later. The first post-War model was a rear-engined car similar in concept to the Volkswagen Beetle, though any direct connection between the two was robustly denied.
The car was called 4CV but sold in the UK as the 750. It was also exported to the US and manufactured in Australia, Japan and South Africa as well as several European countries. More than a million were built, a new record for a French car.
Turbine record breaker
L’étoile filante (French for ‘the shooting star’) was a streamlined Renault dating from 1956 with a 270bhp gas turbine engine. It was built specifically to go as quickly as possible along the Bonneville salt flats in Utah.
Driven by Jean Hébert, it got up to over 190mph and set class records for the flying mile and kilometre which have never been broken.
Renault 4
After the 4CV, Renault created several more rear-engined cars including the Dauphine, the 8, the 10 and the Floride.
The 4, launched in 1961, was quite different. It was Renault’s first front-wheel drive model, similar in concept to Citroen’s 2CV, and it was so popular that it essentially saved the company from the financial effects of a recent collapse in American sales.
Simple and practical, it lasted for more than three decades, finally being discontinued in December 1994 after over 8 million examples had been built. The last of many special edition versions was called, appropriately enough, the Bye-Bye.
The Alpine connection
Jean Rédélé, a Renault dealer based in Dieppe, began competing in races and rallies with a 4CV. As his skills developed, he began building cars of his own under the name Alpine.
Perhaps the most famous Alpine was the A110, which was launched in 1961. Twelve years later the Alpine team dominated the inaugural World Rally Championship, scoring 147 points to closest rival Fiat’s 84.
Renault bought Alpine at about this time and still owns it. A new A110 was revealed in 2017.
The innovative 16
The Renault 16 was difficult to describe when it was launched in 1965 because it wasn’t quite a saloon car but also not exactly an estate.
We would now describe it as a hatchback, a word which didn’t exist at the time. Calling the 16 the first hatchback would be a major claim, but it was certainly a very early example, and possibly the first in Europe, beating the Austin Maxi to market by four years.
Unusual though it was when it appeared, the 16 was built to a pattern which has become almost universal. Most family cars and SUVs sold nowadays are hatchbacks.
The popular 5
In today’s terms, the 5 was the first Renault supermini. The original model, launched in 1972, kept going for 12 years before it was replaced by the similar-looking but technically different second-generation 5.
Despite various claims, the 5 never quite became a cult car in the way that the Mini, the Citroen 2CV or the Volkswagen Beetle did, but it sold very well.
The most extreme version was the 5 Turbo. The road cars were built simply to allow Renault to go rallying with highly modified ones in the 1980s, though these suffered from not being part of the four-wheel drive revolution.
The 5 Turbo was not the same as the 5 Alpine Turbo or GT Turbo. Unlike those, or any other 5, its engine was mounted where the rear seats would normally be, rather than under the bonnet.
Turbocharging in Formula 1
A new set of Formula 1 regulations introduced in 1966 allowed teams to use either a three-litre naturally-aspirated engine or a 1.5-litre supercharged one. Nobody paid any attention to the second option until Renault decided to give it a go.
Turbocharged Renaults were already very successful in sports car racing. The F1 programme, which began in 1977, was more difficult.
The cars were tricky to drive and very unreliable in the early stages, but the concept was correct. Within a few years it was almost impossible to win a Grand Prix without following Renault’s example.
The Espace
The original Espace was developed by Matra from a concept created by British designer Fergus Pollock. Renault took it on essentially because Peugeot didn’t want to, an apparently risky decision which worked out very well.
This was not the first MPV (or ‘people carrier’ as they used to be called) but it did popularise the idea in Europe. More than three decades after the Espace was launched, the MPV market is only just starting to fade away as people decide they would rather have an SUV instead.
Renault is still building Espaces now, though the current fifth-generation car has never been sold in the UK.
Introducing the Clio
The 1980s were very difficult for Renault. At one point losses were reported to be around one billion francs per month, and attempts by CEO Georges Besse to improve the financial situation led to his assassination by members of an anarchist organisation in 1986.
In the recovery period which followed, Renault developed one of its most important cars, the Clio supermini. Far more modern-looking than the 5 it replaced, it quickly became one of Europe’s best sellers from its launch in 1990.
Two of the four generations of Clio have been named European Car of the Year. Versions with three-litre V6 engines in the back have their supporters, though they are not famous for being good round corners.
More significant was the Clio Williams, named after the F1 team to which Renault supplied engines at the time, and the subsequent hot hatches with Renaultsport branding.
Going electric
In recent years Renault has marketed the Fluence ZE (a battery-powered version of the Megane saloon) and the tiny all-electric Twizy.
Its most serious effort, however, has been the Zoe, a proper supermini not based on any existing car. Introduced in late 2012, it has since become one of Europe’s most popular electric vehicles, though sales have been overwhelmingly better in France than in any other country.
The Twingo
Renault combined the words twist, swing and tango to come up with the Twingo name. The first version, introduced in France in 1992, was never sold in the UK, though the second was imported here.
The third, launched in 2014, is the most unusual yet. Developed in conjunction with smart, which uses the same platform for the fortwo and forfour city cars, it was the first rear-engined mainstream Renault since the 8 and 10 were discontinued more than 40 years earlier.
Beyond France
When he built his first Voiturette, Louis Renault could hardly have imagined what it would lead to 120 years later.
The company which bears his name is now a multinational group which includes Renault Samsung Motors in South Korea and AvtoVAZ (builders of the Lada) in Russia, and is part of a three-way alliance with Japanese manufacturers Nissan and Mitsubishi.
It also owns Dacia, which was set up independently in the 1960s to build Renaults under licence. Dacia’s policy of selling simple cars cheaply has been very successful.
Although the brand is based in Romania and retains its national identity, the cars are largely made from Renault components, and are sold as Renaults in some markets.