Renault is familiar with the R4, but the R3 is a little less familiar, and the R2 is even less familiar. In fact, it was never marketed, even though the idea was there.
The R4 was produced in more than 8 million units during its long career (1961–1994) and offered in all shapes and sizes, it is enough to say that it is an icon of the French automobile. Simultaneously, Renault launched the R3, an economical version of the R4, which will however not know the same success and will have a short marketing year since it will be sold only for 2 years (from 1961 to 1962), surely because the resemblance between the 2 models was too close and the customers of the time preferred to drive a more accomplished car. However, on the other side of the border we saw the dazzling success of small cars such as the FIAT 500 on the side of the Alps and the Mini on the other side of the Channel, there was also the Autobianchi A112 and the Honda 350, all in the proportions of 3 meters in length while the R4 measured 3 meters 67 centimeters long.
The idea of making (or remaking) a model below the R4 is tempting, but it should be done in another perspective, that of a strongly different vehicle and in much smaller proportions in order to blend in with the competition while keeping the spirit of Renault and more particularly of the R4, namely an affordable car to suit the middle class and modular to meet the maximum requirements. We are then at the end of the 60s and internally in the offices of Renault we talk about the premises of the concept called VBG ("Vehicle Low Range" or in marketing term: entry-level vehicle). However if the idea exists nothing has been done officially, the concept of the R2 does not exist, only in 1971, the reference automobile newspaper of the time the auto-journal announced the exclusive information of the small Renault in its number 09 of May 1971, but nothing will happen. Auto Journal's information indicated that the car would likely be called the Renault 2, an assumption that logically followed Renault's naming system at the time. Aimed at young people on a budget and families who needed a second car, it measured 118 inches long, the same size as Fiat's rear-engined 500. To put this in perspective, the Autobianchi A112 was 127 inches long, the Honda 360 was 117 inches long, and the Mini was 120 inches long.
Auto-Journal speculated that the R2 would be powered by the same 747cc water-cooled four-cylinder engine found under the hood of the Renault 4, allowing it to fall into the 4CV category of the French taxable horsepower system. Unlike the Renault 4, the Renault 2's engine was supposedly transversely mounted, a configuration that came to prominence in 1959 under the hood of the Mini but was probably pioneered by Dante Giacosa, a Fiat engineer, in 1947. Acceleration figures have not been given, but the car was said to have a top speed of around 71 mph. In all likelihood, the 747cc four-cylinder would have produced around 25 horsepower.
To partially compensate for the car's small size, Auto-Journal reported that the seats could all fold down individually, meaning the car could be transformed from a four-seater to a single-seater and everything in between in just a few minutes. A version with fixed seats would be sold as a slightly cheaper entry-level model. The magazine's illustrations showed that both models were equipped with a tailgate that extended all the way to the rear bumper to make loading and unloading heavy objects as painless as possible.
Auto-Journal provided several remarkably credible illustrations of the car, but it never published a single photo of a test mule (the illustration on the Auto-Journal cover remains fictitious). Nevertheless, the magazine claimed that the Renault 2 was supposed to debut a few years after the Renault 5, most likely in 1974.
The car seemed very promising on paper, but 1974 came and went without even a concept car that foreshadowed the Renault 2. It turns out that the R2 described by Auto-Journal never reached the prototype stage, but the idea of creating a mini Renault took off there, and it wasn't until the 1992 Paris Motor Show that this concept was finally realized.
In 1993, the vehicle was finally launched, marking the birth of the Twingo saga.
Comments