Cars of Coolhaven

Aah… what a lovely car to see driving around on the highway! The Renault Dauphine is quite the looker, but the Gordini version is even nicer. As fast as an aging turtle, unfortunately, but hey, looks are nice too…

The photos aren’t the best in the world, and here and there you can spot some blurring… Margot was keen to put some finger in most of the pictures

From mainly wikipedia:

The Dauphine was launched in 1956 to replace the highly successful Renault 4CV. Like the 4CV, the Dauphine used a single-shell monocoque body. It was a 4-door saloon design as was the 4CV, but it lacked the rear-hinged “suicide doors” of the 4CV. It was also heavier and 12 inches longer than its predecessor, but used the same engine, albeit a version increased in size and power from 760 cc to 845 cc and 19 hp to 32 hp (the Dauphine was infamously slow: Road & Track magazine measured the Dauphine’s 0-60 mph acceleration time as 32 seconds). The Dauphine was originally intended to be called the Corvette, but was changed to Dauphine (the female form of the French feudal title of Dauphin) to avoid confusion with the recently-launched Chevrolet Corvette.

Two limited editions of the Dauphine tuned to get more power from the engine were launched during its lifetime: firstly, Renault performance guru Amédée Gordini (who was to later produce high performance versions of the Renault 8, Renault 12 and Renault 15 among others) engineered a version of the Dauphine tuned to 37 hp, which was sold as the Dauphine Gordini. Also, the final run of Dauphines, a limited edition of 2140 called the 1093, were similarly tuned to 55 hp and featured a twin barrel carburettor, rear track rods, four-speed manual transmission and tachometer, and had a top speed of 140 km/h. The 1093 was only available in white with two blue stripes down each side.

2,150,738 Dauphines were produced in its production run of 10 years.In the United Kingdom, it was one of the first imported cars to sell in large numbers, in a market that had, until then, been dominated by British manufacturers. The Dauphine’s legacy is largely dominated by both its infamously poor performance and bad handling, as well as its poor reliability: in many markets the car became notorious for mechanical problems and rust issues.

A nice link to the Renault page