Celebrating 60 years of the Renault 4

A diamond celebration

Six decades ago, Renault launched one of the most important models it would ever build.


The Renault 4 (officially known as the R4 until 1965) was an immediate success, and helped save its maker from financial collapse. It remained so popular that Renault was able to keep building it for over 30 years without making any major changes.

This gallery is our 60th birthday present to an extraordinary little car. Few have ever deserved it more.

Front-wheel drive

The 4 was Renault’s second front-wheel drive vehicle (after the Estafette van introduced in 1959) and its first front-wheel drive passenger car.

It was also the first Renault to go on sale during the reign of company President Pierre Dreyfus, who had been given that position following the death of Pierre Lefaucheux.

Dreyfus was reportedly no great enthusiast of front-wheel drive, but he realised it was necessary for the 4 to fulfil its design brief.

Practicality

Above all, the 4 had to be practical, with as much cargo space as possible and a flat load floor.

This would not have been achievable with anything resembling Renault’s two rear-engined cars of the period – the 4CV (which the 4 would replace) or the Dauphine.

Almost equally importantly, the 4’s roofline extended from the windscreen almost to the extreme rear. Access to the luggage compartment was through a top-hinged tailgate almost as tall and wide as the car, very much like today’s hatchbacks.

The engine

The most common engine used in the 4 was the four-cylinder, water-cooled Billancourt unit first seen in the 4CV, and originally measuring 747cc.

Renault introduced the Cléon-Fonte engine in the Estafette, Floride/Caravelle and 8 the year after the 4 went on sale, but did not use it in the 4 until the late 1970s.

Contrary to modern front-wheel drive cars, the 4’s engine was mounted fore-and-aft rather than transversely, and behind the gearbox rather than alongside it, just as in the 4CV and Dauphine.

The gearchange

The underbonnet layout raised an awkward question: how can you connect a car’s gearbox to its gearlever if the engine is in the way?

Renault got round that by running the gear linkage over the top of the engine, as Citroën had been doing for years with the 2CV.

Suspension

Renault used torsion bars at both ends of the 4. The suspension was very soft and provided an immense amount of wheel travel, making it almost impossible for the car to go round any corner on three wheels or fewer, no matter how hard it was being driven.

The car’s determination to keep all of its tyres in contact with the ground meant that it had a lot of grip on Tarmac.

For the same reason, it was surprisingly capable off-road, even without the four-wheel-drive system used on some special versions.

Start of production

The last 4CV came off the line at Renault’s Île Seguin plant in Paris on 6 July 1961.

In early August, after well over a thousand workers had completely refitted the factory, the 4 began to emerge from it.

It wasn’t a moment too soon. US sales of the Dauphine had been spectacular in the late 1950s, but they collapsed in 1960. Renault needed the 4 to be a big success.

Showtime

The 4 made its debut at the Frankfurt show in September 1961 (a fact which seems to have been largely forgotten), and was displayed a month later at the equivalent event in Paris.

Parisians could do more than just look at the new model. In a marketing initiative called Prenez le volant (‘take the wheel’), 200 examples were parked in the city with keys in the ignition so that potential customers could try it out for themselves.

The car’s similarity to the older Citroën 2CV caused some controversy. At the Paris show, General de Gaulle asked François Michelin (CEO of the tyre company which owned Citroën at the time) if everything was going well.

“It would be,” Michelin replied, “if Renault stopped copying us.” Renault defended itself robustly.

The Renault 3

The 4 went on sale at the same time as a cheaper and less well-known version called the Renault 3.

This car had minimal equipment, four side windows rather than six, and a 603cc version of the Billancourt engine. The most basic version of the 4 was almost identical to the 3, except that it used the 747cc engine.

These models did not sell well, and were abandoned in late 1962. The regular 4, however, was so popular that it helped Renault recover from the Dauphine calamity in the US.
 

La Parisienne

Renault produced a great many special-edition versions of the 4 over the years.

One of the earliest was La Parisienne, which was designed to appeal specifically to female owners.

Its most obvious exterior styling feature was the wickerwork pattern applied to the doors, rear wings and tailgate.

The first million

The one millionth Renault 4 left the Île Seguin factory on 1 February 1966, four and a half years after the first.

This manufacturing rate was very similar to that of the Dauphine. By contrast, it had taken Renault 14 years to build all 1,105,547 examples of the 4CV.

Production of the 4, at plants in Europe, Africa and South America, would eventually exceed eight million.
 

Technical developments

Renault created a more powerful 4 in 1963 by fitting an 845cc engine. This was the version of the Billancourt motor which had been available in the Dauphine since its launch five years earlier. A 782cc engine was added to the range in 1972.

Between these events, Renault closed an almost inexplicable gap which had existed between the 4 and the Citroën 2CV ever since the former’s arrival.

Citroën had been offering a four-speed gearbox in its car since the 1940s. Renault persevered with a three-speed unit for several years, finally offering four forward ratios in 1967.

A change of style

Alterations to the design of the 4 were minimal even though the car remained in production for over 30 years.

One of the most noticeable changes happened in 1967. The radiator grille was enlarged, and now sat in the same oblong as the headlights rather than being completely separate from them.

There would be a further update to the front-end styling, but it would be even less radical than this one.
 

Plein Air

The Plein Air (French for ‘open air’) was what might be described as a ‘beach car’. It was launched in 1968, the same year as the rival, 2CV-based Citroën Méhari and four years after the Mini Moke.

While the Méhari and Moke didn’t look much like the cars they were based on, the Plein Air was clearly based on the 4, though it had a roofless, cut-down body and no doors.

This was relatively easy to achieve, since Renault had chosen body-on-chassis construction for the 4, a method which was already considered old-fashioned for a passenger car back in 1961.

The Plein Air was produced in very small numbers from May 1968 until April 1970.

Renault Rodeo

The Plein Air was followed by the much longer-lived Rodeo, which made its debut in 1970.

The Rodeo had a new body sitting on the 4’s chassis, and was fitted at first with the 845cc Billancourt engine.

This was replaced in 1972 by the 1108cc Cléon-Fonte engine, six years before it made its debut in the regular 4.
 

The Fourgonette

The Renault 4 Fourgonette (or van) was an inexpensive commercial vehicle which became a very common sight throughout France.

From the nose to the front passenger compartment it looked just like any other 4. The roofline from there to the rear was significantly higher, and there was a side-hinged rear door in place of the normal top-hinged tailgate.

Lots of load space

That high roof, along with a complete absence of seats, upholstery or anything else, gave the Fourgonette a remarkable load capacity for a relatively small vehicle.

The van was so popular that it was produced almost throughout the lifetime of the 4.

The rear light cluster of the vehicle pictured above shows that it is one of the later examples. The hatch above the door made loading tall objects even easier than it might otherwise have been.

The flexible 4

No other 4 could beat the example pictured above for versatility.

It was essentially a Fourgonette, with the high rear roof section and just two side doors. But it also had full-size side windows and rear seats.

This combination made the vehicle both a practical family car and a very effective load carrier. This was not an MPV or an SUV in the modern sense, but for a 1960s car it came very close.

Hanging in there

In the early 1970s, Renault launched the more modern 5 and the larger 6, both of which were partly related to the 4.

These models were around a decade newer than the 4, but neither of them replaced it.

The 4’s main rival remained the Citroën 2CV, and the Dyane and Ami which arose from it, and it was still performing well in this market segment, partly because of its more refined engine and greater (though, in the great scheme of things, minimal) power output.

A new grille

The front end of the 4 was updated for the second time in 1974, seven years after the first change.

The overall shape of the grille remained the same, but it was now made of plastic and less ornate than its immediate predecessor.

The plastic was light grey in colour in some cases, but towards the end of the model’s life it was more commonly black.
 

The Safari

The Renault 4 Safari was a special edition which went on sale in late 1975.

It was largely a styling exercise. Model-specific exterior paint colours contrasted with black bumpers, door handles, door mirrors and side rubbing strips, while the seats were upholstered in multi-coloured striped cloth.

Potential buyers found the Safari only moderately interesting. It was abandoned in 1978.

A new engine

After 17 years in production, the 4 finally became available with an engine other than the little Billancourt.

As previously mentioned, this was the Cléon-Fonte unit, which wasn’t exactly new when it became available in the 4 GTL in 1978.

It had made its debut way back in 1962, but that made it a youngster compared with the Billancourt, which dated back to 1947.

Better brakes

Due to its lack of power (even with the 1108cc engine) and weight, Renault was able to fit drum brakes to all corners of the 4 for two decades.

It was only in the 1980s, when front disc brakes were almost universal throughout the motor industry, that they became standard equipment on the 4.

Renault’s policy on this subject varied wildly between models. The 8 had been fitted with all-round disc brakes since its launch in 1962.

End of the road

The Renault 4 achieved the almost unprecedented feat of surviving into its fourth decade with only minor changes.

The very last example was manufactured in a factory in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, where production of the car exceeded half a million.

The 4 was succeeded as Renault’s entry-level model by the Twingo in 1993.

In a more modern world, the new car could not remain undeveloped for as long as its predecessor. The third-generation Twingo was launched just 11 years after the arrival of the first.

Into a new century

Nearly 30 years after the 4 was discontinued, Renault returned to it with a 2019 concept car called the e-Plein Air.

It looked very similar to the roofless 4 of the late 1960s but did not share a single component with it.

As suggested by the name (and like a great many concept cars of recent years), the e-Plein Air was an electric vehicle, with similar performance to the much smaller and lighter Twizy.
 

A future 4

In June 2021, Renault confirmed that a car called the 4ever will be one of 10 electric vehicles to go on sale by 2025.

The 4ever is likely to be a small crossover based on the same platform as a new version of the 5 hatchback. The official graphic above suggests it will have some resemblance to the original 4.

An electric van is also being developed from the same platform, and may look similar to the Fourgonette. Although production of the original 4 came to an end in 1992, the story may not yet be over.