Look at this interior! All those hounds’ teeth! That rich liver-y color of the vinyl, all the curvy shapes and piping and moldings and that peculiar gray dashboard! Look at that spindly, incredibly delicate gearshift! It looks like a conductors’ baton or a Q-Tip jammed in the floor. This interior is basically this woman
…just, you know, as a car interior. I want more Dauphine. Give it to me, me:
Aw hell yeah, that’s the stuff right there. Pure, uncut charmium, right from the charmé region of France. Also, is that color really “infant yellow?”
The Dauphine was pretty unashamed about its rear-engine-ness, with a longitudinal inline-four just slung way the hell out behind that rear axle. Also, look how deep that radiator is tucked back there! Hey, let’s watch an old Dauphine commercial:
There’s a lot of interesting details in there: the old, American-ized pronunciation of “Ren-ALT,” the showing off of city and country horns, the way they say it’s the best-selling four-door import car, because they were a distant second place after the VW Beetle, but the Beetle only had two doors, so, there you go. Also, check out how the US-spec bumper overriders block a good 1/3rd of the already tiny taillights.
Okay, one more charming thing: I love the special spare tire compartment of the Dauphine, and how it looks like it’s sticking its tongue out at you.
I’ve driven the Lane Museum’s Dauphine. It’s absolutely delightful.
Okay, now go forth into your day, friends, made a bit buoyant with some of the contagious charisma of this little dollop of Gallic charm.
My family ran a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in the 50’s. My dad worked there for a couple of years and someone brought a Dauphine in that needed a transmission re-build. On a Plymouth, that might take three hours. It took them 18 on the Dauphine. Partly because it wasn’t familiar to them, but partly because you had to pull the engine to get to the transmission.
Howard Gossage, the great San Francisco ad man did some fun ads for the Dauphine.
I guess it was just up to American importers to make ads for them and nobody involved cared to figure out how things are supposed to be pronounced.
Now that I have some money and some space, quirky little jewels like this aren’t nearly as common. It’s different when you have to search for an interesting car, rather than choose it because you stumbled onto it at the right time.
Around the same time I found the Dauphine, and in the same price range, I ran across a Peugeot 403 that needed engine work, a Saab 96 with the front fenders in the back seat, and a Lamborghini Espada that was filthy inside and out. The Espada needed, at minimum, new brakes on all four corners, and looked like it was owned by a hoarder who lived in the car. $20,000 would’ve easily bought all four and restored them to like new, but that was a small fortune in those days.
I’m finally at a place in life where I can drop my caution about buying truly weird cars, and I’m very grateful for that.
Tell me that you don’t want to just pet this thing…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_4CV
