Pleased With My New Renault

They don't sell French cars in the U.S., Pitter!

My mother bought a '59 Renault in '59. It was the model the called the Dauphin. I am surprised they are still in business.

For that you should be eternally grateful.

His profile says he lives in Colombia.

However, if Pitter moves back to USA and takes this car, it will be harder to get it serviced as the parts and service network is much harder to access here. Who knows how hard to service it is while in Colombia?!

Wasn't it the case that, during the Bush era, they were all rebranded as "Freedom Cars"?

Seems so. Freedom from peace ... of mind!

I'm sure I couldn't get it into the US if I wanted to but I don't. There are certainly no service issues in Colombia since there are plenty of dealers. I forgot to mention that my car was assembled here in Colombia. I found this tidbit about today's car manufacturing kind of interesting. Dacia of Romania is the world's largest producer of "complete knock down kits". Cars like my Duster are shipped disassembled to auto assembly plants in about seven different countries (including Colombia, Russia and India among others)where they are assembled, painted and sold or in some cases exported. At the moment Colombia is exporting the Duster to Mexico, Ecuador and Peru. RHD Dusters in England are branded Dacia and are assembled in India. Renault was actually the second foreign manufacturer to open a plant in Colombia and that was in the early seventies. The first was British Austin in the sixties but it didn't last long. So there you have it and who'd a thunk it...

I recall reading a few years ago that Mexico was the world's ninth largest exporter of cars. That was surprising too.

There you are, Lordy, welcome back.

Only the ones that were covered in gravy.

I had to respond to your thread Pitter. Any thread with a Title of "Pleased with my Renault" has got to be lots of fun.

Years ago, we had a Renault GORDINI in our Hill Climbing Club in Pa. (A small state in the US). We drove the crap out of it and never EVER took a place in a hill climb. Finally one of the members was driving it in the "Touring Sedan " Class, and it rolled over severl times and the engine bolts came loose so that the engine was sorta hanging out the trunk. It looked like a giant teel haemorhoid was affecting the little thing.

Yes, agreed. That's why they weren't popular in USA. They had a worse reputation in USA for reliability and repairs than did FIAT (Fix It Again Tony) here.

Renault has made some pretty nice cars and are a good seller in most countries. I've rented them in Europe and was impressed with them.
Dauphine was designed for a different market as was the 2cv (or cv2) they did what they were designed to do. Inexpensive transportation for people living in countries that did not an Interstate Highway System and with gas prices about 10 times the price we had here. They were used for picnics on the weekend and were lucky to travel 5000 miles a year. The owner in Europe maintained their own cars, from oil change to tune-up to valve jobs.
A book published in Europe in the 50'60s, "High Performance Cars" listed the Dauphine. I was surprised.
I do have a different view of cars than most. A tag on my Subaru says, "My others car is a Ginetta" (it a 1965 G.4).

You mean they were actually designed to blow head gaskets every few thousand miles?
You're darn right they were lucky to make it for 5,000 miles. Actually, that was a pretty optimistic goal.

Our '59 model had a slot in the rear bumper for a manual crank. This was in case of starter failure as the cost of a replacement starter approached the resale value of the entire vehicle.

To say they FIATs were more reliable than our Dauphine is feint praise, indeed.

I had a Dauphine for 2 years put about 30k on it and had no problem with the head gasket. Advance can cause a head gasket problem along with over heating that could warp the head. Mine might have been an exception; but one that had a problem with the gasket could have also been an exception.
A friend had purchased a Renault R12 and a Fiat 850 Spider at the same time.
6 months after getting them he told me about the problems he was having with both. I told him to bring on car to a friends garage and I did a tune-up on the other. I got a call from the garage which had the Fiat and he asked me to stop by and adjust the Weber carb as he had never worked on them. He didn't go back to the dealer again and didn't have problems.
I'd like to have 5 cents for every time I have heard people complain about SU carbs always going out of adjustment. If they were adjusted properly they were not a problem and required little attention.

I had a Renault 9 GTE once upon a time. I could only drive on roads that I knew, as the steering wheel and front wheels worked about five seconds out of synch. I would therefore look ahead and think "there's a gentle left hand curve coming up in about two hundred yards, I'd better start turning the wheel".

I also worked out that the GTE stood for Gets There Eventually.

Mind you, I bought this Citroen when I was stoned.

Yes, you must have been stoned at the time of the transaction.

They sold you an old beetle for a Citroen.