‘The 4 shrugs off irregularities with a Gallic nonchalance that simply blows us away’

The late 1950s were exciting times for the motor industry. It was being pulled in disparate directions and, for a while at least, all of the major car manufacturers were reading and interpreting circumstances in varying ways. One thing they all agreed on was that, in a post-war world full of bright-eyed optimism, there was an insatiable demand for new cars – but in the aftermath of 
the 1956 Suez Crisis, and with fuel prices rocketing and supply dwindling, what 
the baby-boomers really needed was economy. And in the years that followed, 
a variety of ‘people’s cars’ were introduced – largely to meet this demand for 
parsimonious and inexpensive cars; but also to meet the challenge laid down by the pioneering Volkswagen Beetle and CitroΫn 2CV, both rooted in the pre-war era.

Between 1957 and 1962 a host of people’s cars fed a hungry public: the Fiat 500, BMC Mini, Simca 1000, NSU Prinz 4, Hillman Imp and Renault 4 were rolled out by their expectant makers, mass sales their ambition. Fascinatingly, no real technical consensus had been reached at this point. Air- and water-cooled engines powered these cars, with two or four cylinders, mounted at the front or rear; some were tiny (Fiat 500, Mini), others less so (Imp, R4). Looking at today’s small-car orthodoxy – 
an addiction to the transverse-engine, front-wheel-drive transmission package – only BMC called it correctly, with the Mini.

But that’s not to say that Renault’s solution was technically off the pace. Far from it. In many ways, its conception was a by-product of CitroΫn’s remarkably off-beat 2CV. And that car had front-wheel drive and interconnected suspension, despite being sold for a rock-bottom price. Although it had been conceived as basic 
transport to mobilise farm workers, the 2CV actually proved a hit with an entire generation across France, and Renault wanted to create an effective rival.

Renault’s newly installed president, Pierre Dreyfus, came up with the concept 
of what he referred to as a ‘Blue Jeans’ car in 1956. It arose from the ashes of the company’s stillborn replacement for the 4CV, Projet 109, which had been on the back-burner since 1949. The idea was simple: it would be versatile, inexpensive and, most importantly, smarter and more usable than the 2CV. It would also have to lend itself to a commercial version. And that was a primary factor in Renault’s decision 
to make its Blue Jeans car front-wheel drive: this layout resulted in a larger, 
more pratical loading bay.

Dreyfus hired gifted young designer Yves George to work on the new car, and stuck to his maxim that Renault should encourage non-conformist thinking 
and build city cars that were not only functional but stylish too. ‘Cars should 
no longer be just seats and a trunk,’ he exclaimed during development. ‘Give me space!’ They certainly managed that.

Although it became known during development as Projet 112, engineers and designers preferred the nickname ‘350’ – a reference to its projected price, 350,000 French francs and not a centime more. To keep to that price, it would need to retain the Dauphine’s 747cc four-cylinder engine and its gearbox (fitted longitudinally, with the transmission mounted ahead) while, to aid practicality, it would have a flat floor with the bodywork simply bolted to it. The pièce de résistance was its tailgate, which arguably made the R4 the first front-wheel-drive supermini.

As part of the car’s go-anywhere ruggedness, it was fitted with long-travel independent torsion-bar suspension. The layout resulted in a wheelbase longer 
on the left side than the right, as the lateral rear torsion bars were offset one behind the other. Thought was also put into reducing maintenance, so the suspension did without lubrication points, and the cooling system was sealed with an expansion tank – an industry first.

Renault made a big splash when it came to the R4’s launch at the 1961 French motor show, held at the Grand Palais in Paris. The company carpet-bombed the event, bringing along 200 cars for the public to drive in an initiative called ‘Take the Wheel’. It proved a roaring success, with an estimated 60,000 Parisians 
taking time out to sample the new car; many of them were subsequently converted into eager new owners.

And it’s easy to see why even the shortest journey would so readily convert into a sale as, half a century on from those first customer drives, we lope along some of the finest roads the Loire Valley has to offer. We’ve been invited by Renault Classic to try a selection of 4s (the R4 tag was dropped in 1965) as a 50th birthday treat. The weather is typically sunny and warm, and the roads and villages we drive though have remained largely unchanged since the 4’s heyday. We’re charmed by La Régie’s breadvan from the moment we turn the key.

The styling, overseen by Yves Georges, might be minimalist, but the detailing is superbly judged. Items such as the grille brightwork and Renault’s Art Deco badge catch the eye, as does the side-mounted exhaust outlet, but it’s the cleverness of the packaging that really impresses. At 3.65m (just under 12ft) in length, the 4 is now considered 
a small car – and even when new, it would have hardly been seen as grandly scaled. But the 4 has five wide-opening doors and there’s room inside for five people, as long as they’re friendly.

Unlike in many baby cars of the era, the driving position is excellent – no offset pedals here – and the interior, although basic, is well finished and stylishly functional. To modern eyes the gearstick, which emerges from the dashboard, is a little odd, but the shift pattern is conventional and the change quality is spot-on. Firing up the longitudinally mounted four-pot isn’t initially promising, as it sounds tinny at idle, but then this is neither a sports car nor a luxury car, so no surprise there.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder with your favourite passenger adds to the fun and, as we pull away, the tinniness of that eager little power unit makes way for a warmer, unburstable personality. A good job too, as our 1968 Renault 4L’s 845cc engine delivers a mere 32bhp, and needs its neck wringing to keep up with the flow of modern traffic as we leave St Pierre des Corps. But we’re heading for the rolling countryside and, as the roads open up, the Renault suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. French byways and D-roads might be lovely and straight and magnificently surfaced, but they’re also wickedly cambered and their age is underscored by the flaking paint on the stone road markers alongside.

But the 4 shrugs off these irregularities with a Gallic nonchalance that simply blows us away. Put it down to long-travel suspension and well-controlled damping by all means, but the 4 weighs in at a mere 595kg 
so this car isn’t steam-rolling the road the way a modern one would. 
And that loping quality marks out the 4 as extremely clever.

But with such a cossetting, long-striding ride, we’re going to need to take the corners at walking pace, right? Wrong! At the first sight of a sweeper we decide to keep the throttle floored, maintaining precious momentum, just to see what happens. After all, this car’s inspired by the 2CV, and that can be made to corner at fantastic speed, so long as you’re not scared of a little (or maybe a lot!) of body roll.

And guess what? The 
4’s pretty much the same. It grips tenaciously, and the gorgeously slim-rimmed steering wheel feeds back all the information you’re ever going to need. The story it tells is one of grip, grip, grip. We’re in convoy with a couple of other 4s from the Renault Classic collection, and it’s fun watching them lean in the corners but, from the driving seat, it actually doesn’t feel at all roly-poly – instead, it just inspires confidence. For that alone we love it.

Taking stock during a relaxed lunch at the Ch΢teau de Vallagon, 
it’s hard not to feel seduced by the 4’s loveable simplicity. The communicative steering and the precision of its gearchange leave an indelible impression, and it’s difficult to believe that this was La Régie’s first front-wheel-drive car. But the 4 was conceived for families and 
city-dwellers, whose first priority is practicality – and a quick look in the boot reveals ample space for wine and baguettes.

Clearly it was a winning concept, and understandably Renault was keen to develop the 4. There was an entry-level 603cc R3, for those who found the standard car too ostentatious, but that was dropped after a year, allowing the company to concentrate purely on la quatre. De luxe and Super versions were subsequently launched, and the Dauphine engine was expanded to 845cc. In 1978, and in its ultimate incarnation, it received the 1108cc four-pot also used in the ultra-successful Renault 5, giving the 4GTL genuine traffic-matching pace.

The simple construction also lent itself well to developing new body styles. The Fourgonette van was an obvious addition to the range, and that was later joined by the Plein Air beach car; there was the plusher, squarer 6 hatchback, the utilitarian Rodéo and, ultimately, Michel Boué’s genius creation, the Renault 5 supermini of 1972, which wrapped radical new bodywork around the 4’s mechanicals.

Dreyfus wanted it to sell around the world, too. A committed European, he saw the 4 as an ideal bridgehead into ‘local’ markets, describing his car as ‘Renault’s weapon of conquest’. His comment that the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 (which led to the creation of the European Economic Community) was ‘a major event capable of overcoming the errors of the past and inventing new philosophies’ was a barely disguised reference to additional European assembly sites.

But his ambition went even beyond that: Dreyfus described the 4 as a ‘universal car’. And it showed in his tireless promotion for the cause around the globe. The 4 ended up being assembled in 28 countries, with 60% of its eight million production run being built outside France. Of those offshoots, stand-outs include Italy, where Alfa Romeo and Renault formed a Joint Venture in October 1958, initially to sidestep Italy’s protectionist import policy. First cars off the line were Dauphines, but in 1962, and as a forerunner of what would come later with Alfasud, the two companies formed SAM (Sviluppo Motorist Meridionale), and started making the 4 at Pomigliano d’Arco, near Naples. The agreement didn’t last long, scuppered by the Italian Government’s imposition of a car tax based on length. It was also built as far and wide as Ireland and Yugoslavia (where the 4 remained in production until 1992) in Europe; Morocco and Madagascar in Africa; Argentina and Mexico in the Americas; Sri Lanka and the Philippines in Asia; even Australia.

It was also amazingly effective in the sort of competition in which its ruggedness, reliability and long-travel suspension were more of an advantage than outright pace. It came second in the 1979 Paris-Dakar Rally behind the Range Rover, and matched that with an impressive third place the following year, against much faster opposition. Clearly the Renault 4 was – and is – rather special.

All of which is something we come to understand implicitly as we roll on through the Loire Valley. And although the setting is beautiful, the car is most definitely the star. The 4 feels completely unstoppable, as if it will trundle on as long as there’s petrol to fuel it. Consequently, it’s still a common sight in rural France, where owners love the way they can fix whatever breaks on their 4s with only the simplest of tools.

La quatre might have been created to motorise France’s young families in the boom years, and was made necessarily simple as a result, but it really is more than the sum of its parts. More than eight million people fell for its charms during its 31-year production run, and many more have since. Now we’re among them.