The Renault 4, also known as the 4L (pronounced "Quatrelle" in French), is a hatchback economy car produced by the French automaker Renault between 1961 and 1994. It was the first front-wheel drive family car produced by Renault.[nb 1]
The car was launched at a time when several decades of economic stagnation were giving way to growing prosperity and surging car ownership in France. The first million cars were produced by 1 February 1966, less than four and a half years after launch; eventually over eight million were built, making the Renault 4 a commercial success because of the timing of its introduction and the merits of its design. Although originally marketed as a small estate car, it is now regarded as the first mass production hatchback car.
The Renault 4 was Renault's response to the 1948 Citroën 2CV. Renault was able to review the advantages and disadvantages of the 2CV design. The Citroën had made motoring available to low-income people in France, and especially to farmers and other people in rural areas, for whom the car was as much a working tool as personal transport. The 2CV had been designed in the 1930s for use in the French countryside where the road network was poor - speed was not a requirement but a good ride, useful rough-terrain ability, a versatile body for load carrying and economy and simplicity of operation were its key considerations. But by the late 1950s the 2CV was becoming outdated. Rural roads in France were improved and the national system of autoroutes were being developed. Agriculture was becoming more mechanised with fewer smallholdings and family farms for which the 2CV was designed. The Citroën had also proved popular with people living in towns and cities as affordable, economical transport but the 2CV's rural design brief made it less than ideal as a city car and, despite improvements, the late-1950s 2CV had a top speed of just 45mph (70kph). Its air-cooled two-cylinder engine was reliable and economical but noisy and offered poor performance. The 2CV's suspension gave it an excellent ride and good grip and handling but was mechanically complex with many moving parts that required regular maintenance and lubrication at intervals as low as every 1000 miles (1600km). With its roots in the 1930s the 2CV's styling was also outdated and, with its separate wing/fenders, had a relatively narrow and cramped body for its overall footprint. While the Citroën had been designed during the Great Depression when money was tight and living standards were relatively low, by the 1960s the French economy was growing and people would be able to afford a more modern, refined and less utilitarian small car.
In early 1956, Renault Chairman Pierre Dreyfus launched this new project: designing a new model to replace the rear engined 4CV and compete against the Citroën 2CV that would become an everyman's car, capable of satisfying the needs of most consumers. It would be a family car, a woman's car, a farmer's car, or a city car.
The Renault 4 shared many design traits with the older Citroën 2CV to allow it fulfil the same role as a versatile utility car, especially for people in rural France and other parts of the world with poor roads. It had a large structural platform with a separate body. It had front-wheel drive, long-travel fully independent suspension and Rack and pinion steering. It had a simple body with minimal equipment, a large space for cargo or luggage and 'deckchair' seats which could be easily removed. However the Renault 4 updated this basic concept with a larger four-cylinder water-cooled engine with a sealed cooling system offering much better refinement and performance than the contemporary 2CV, with a top speed of over 65mph (104kph). The suspension consisted of torsion bars which required no regular maintenance. The boxy full-width body offered more space for both passengers and luggage than the similar-sized 2CV and the car boasted an early hatchback body for greater practicality.
Renault launched the Renault 3 and the Renault 4 simultaneously in July 1961. The cars shared the same body and most mechanical components, but the R3 was powered by a 603 cc version of the engine while the R4 featured a 747 cc engine. This placed the R3 in the 3CV taxation class while the R4 was in the 4CV class. Actual maximum power output was claimed by Renault as 22.5 hp for the R3, and 26.5 or 32 hp for the R4, depending on price level and the type of carburettor fitted. Initially the base versions of the R3 and R4 came with a thick C-pillar behind each of the rear doors. Quarter glass was a 400 francs option for the basic R4. The extra visibility increased the weight of the vehicle, but these windows soon became standard for all R4s.
The R3 and R4 were targeted at the Citroën 2CV that employed soft springs and long wheel travel to absorb bumps on poorly maintained roads. The Renault 3/4 applied the same approach and two models appeared at the Paris Motor Show in 1961 on a specialized demonstration display that incorporated an irregular rolling road. Visitors could sit inside a car, which remained undisturbed while the suspension absorbed the erratic bumps of the rolling road. In 1962 Renault employed the same display at the Turin Motor Show.
The basic version of the R3 was priced 40 francs below the lowest priced version of the Citroën 2CV in 1961 and featured painted bumpers and grill, a simplified instrument panel, a single sun visor, no windshield washer, and no interior door panels. This trim was also offered in the more powerful R4. The R4L with six side windows, chrome coloured bumper and grill, as well as a less spartan interior cost 400 francs (roughly 8%) more than the R4 with its four side windows. However, as with the Renault 4CV “Service” in 1953, customers shunned the basic model and in October 1962, the Renault R3 was discontinued, along with the most basic version of the Renault 4.
A "super" version (branded "de luxe" in some export markets) with opening rear quarter-light windows and extra trim was also offered. The de luxe and super versions of the R4L received a version of the engine from the Renault Dauphine giving them an engine capacity of 845 cc. After the withdrawal of the 603 cc engined R3, the 747 cc R4 model continued to be listed with an entry level recommended retail price, but the slightly larger-engined L versions were more popular. By 1965, Renault had removed the extra "R" from their model names: the Renault R4L had become the Renault 4L.
Early versions of the Renault R4 used engines and transmissions from the Renault 4CV. The original design brief called for an engine size between 600 cc and 700 cc, but there was no consensus as to whether to use a four-cylinder unit or to follow Citroën with a two-cylinder unit. With Volkswagen rapidly growing market share across Europe and North America, Renault also gave serious consideration to an air-cooled boxer motor option for the forthcoming R3/R4. However, using the existing water-cooled unit from the 4CV was a solution, especially in view of the extended period of teething troubles encountered by the Renault Fregate, which was then Renault's most recent attempt to develop an innovative powerplant. The existing engines were larger than that specified by management for the new 4CV, but the automaker addressed this by reducing the bore so that the overall capacity of the base engine for the new R3 worked out to be 603 cc, comfortably at the lower end of the required 600–700 cc range. However, since Renault already produced the 747 cc version of the engine that was well proven in the 4CV, it made sense to use this as well in what would in many respects be the older car's successor. Therefore, in 1961, the R3 had a 49 mm bore and 80 mm stroke, while the R4 received the 54.5 mm × 80 mm existing engine.
Moving the engine from the rear of the 4CV to the front of the new model involved significant planning: design changes to the unit were introduced as part of the process. The inlet manifold was now a steel casting whereas on the 4CV it had been constructed of a light-weight alloy: this was driven by cost considerations now that aluminium was not so inexpensive as it had been fifteen years earlier. Renault also took the opportunity to introduce a feature which subsequently became mainstream. Renault also designed a “sealed-for-life” cooling system, supported by a small expansion tank on the right side of the engine bay. The cooling system contained antifreeze intended to enable operation without topping up or other intervention throughout a car's life provided ambient temperatures below minus 40 degrees were avoided.
The engines were larger than the small 425 cc (later 602 cc and 29 hp), engines in the 2CV. The R4 always had a four-cylinder watercooled engine. The original Renault R4’s engine capacity of 747 cc served to differentiate the model from the more powerful Renault Dauphine, but the Dauphine’s 845 cc engine was used in the 4 itself from 1963 onwards: for most markets at this stage the Dauphine engine now came as standard in the top of the range Renault R4 Super, and was available in some other versions only as an optional extra. Given that Renault’s 603, 747, and 845 cc engines all shared the same cylinder stroke and were all of the same basic design, it is likely that there was very little difference between the manufacturing costs of the basic engine block between the three. From the perspective of the sales and marketing department, they did fall within different taxation classes (respectively 3CV, 4CV and 5CV) but at this end of the market tax level differences were by now less of an issue even in those European countries that still taxed cars according to engine size.
With time, the increasing trend to production of Renault 4s in a wide range of countries reduces the validity of generalised statements as to which engines were fitted when: in French built cars the old 845 cc engine soldiered on in the more lowly versions until the mid-1980s, but in 1978 the top end Renault 4 GTLs received the new 1108 cc engine: this engine was not new to Renault, however, being the five-bearing “Sierra” engine, first installed in the Estafette van and R8 in the summer of 1962. A smaller version (956 cc) of this new engine finally replaced the by now venerable 845 cc engine in the 4 in 1986. Unlike the original "Billancourt" engine from the 4CV, Renault's “Sierra” engine rotated in a clockwise direction, so fitting it required reversing the direction of the differential in the gear box in order to avoid producing a car with one forward speed and four reverse speeds.
The initial transmission was a three-speed manual, described by one critic as an obsolete feature when compared to the four-speed manual of the then thirteen-year-old Citroën 2CV. Ironically the new Renault 4 did not inherit its transmission from the Renault 4CV nor from anyone else: the transmission was newly developed for the car. The dash-mounted gear lever was linked via a straight horizontal rod that passed over the longitudinally mounted engine and clutch directly to the gearbox right at the front. The resulting absence of any linkage at floor level permitted a flat floor across the full width of the car's cabin. Synchromesh featured only on the top two ratios, even though the low power of the engine required frequent gear changes by any driver using normal roads and wishing to make reasonable progress. On this point Renault quickly acknowledged their error and cars produced from 1962 featured synchromesh on all three ratios. In 1968 the Renault 4 finally received a four-speed transmission.
The three principal new models introduced by Renault since the war had all featured monocoque "chassisless" construction which was believed to save cost in the manufacturing process and to cut running costs by reducing vehicle weight. The Renault R3/R4 design defied this by now widely accepted mantra, employing a separate platform to which the body shell was then attached. The body's structural role in maintaining the overall rigidity of the car body was thereby reduced, placing less stress on the roof and allowing for thinner window pillars. Although the use made of a separate platform resembled, in some respects, the use that pre-war designs would have made of a chassis, the outcome was a structure described as semi-monocoque, and it would later allow Renault to use the R4 platform, with very little modification, to build new models such as the Renault 6 and Rodeo. (Later, the successful Renault 5 used the R4 running gear but in a monocoque shell).
The R3 and R4 had four-wheel torsion-bar independent suspension. This was an innovation which would be copied on a succession of subsequent front-engined Renaults introduced during the 1960s and 70s.
The car features a shorter wheelbase on the left than on the right because the rear wheels are not mounted directly opposite one another. This concept allowed a very simple design of the rear suspension using transverse torsion bars located one behind the other without affecting handling. The front torsion bars were longitudinal.
The fixed end of the torsion bars is mounted on quadrants that can be adjusted via a holes/fixing bolt arrangement. This enables the suspension to be "beefed up" and the ground clearance increased. With specialist tools provided by Renault it is done in a matter of minutes, and gives the light 4L a good amount of off-road capabilities. This feature, along with the installation of a thick protecting aluminium plate under the engine, has been widely used either by globe trotters and off-road racers and is still favoured with present-day student 4L Trophy entrants. Damping was provided by hydraulic telescopic shock absorbers on all four wheels. Those at the rear were mounted virtually horizontally which avoided the intrusion of rear suspension componentry into the flat floored passenger cabin.
The longitudinal layout of the front-wheel drive engine and transmission with engine behind the front axle, and gearbox/differential in front is identical to the Citroën Traction Avant. The suspension is also very similar, the only difference being the deletion of the Citroën's flexible beam between the rear wheels, to give the Renault 4 fully independent rear suspension. This is ironic as Louis Renault, the company's founder had been the harshest critic of the Traction at the time of its launch in the 1930s.
The Renault 4 was a basic car with a simple dashboard and sliding windows. Suspension and seats were designed for comfort, and ventilation and the heater were effective.
The Renault 4 was produced for many years, but was not significantly changed. Exterior chrome trim was eventually phased out on all models, and aluminium grilles were replaced with plastic ones. There were three different dashboard designs. On the right side of the car at the back the position of the fuel filler was raised by approximately 15 cm (6 inches) less than a year after the car's launch, presumably for safety reasons, but apart from this, changes to the body panels were limited to a slightly altered hood and hinges.
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