70 years of the Renault Dauphine: the car that took Renault to a whole new level

The Renault Dauphine was unveiled in 1956 as the successor to the 4CV, designed for motorists who wanted more space, greater comfort and more elegance. Pierre Lefaucheux, Renault's CEO since 1945, began thinking about a 4CV successor in 1949, and the replacement project, known internally as Project 109, got fully underway in 1951. Like the 4CV, the Dauphine kept a rear-engine layout but was larger, more spacious and more powerful: its 845 cc four-cylinder engine produced 30 horsepower and gave a top speed of around 115 km/h, with four doors and a 380-litre boot. Its name came from its predecessor's success, since the 4CV had become the queen of sales and the newcomer was therefore its dauphine, the French title for the heir apparent. The car also changed how Renault designed vehicles: market research played an increasingly important role, and from 1953 the decorator and artist Paule Marrot worked with Renault on body colours and interiors, helping bring brighter shades to an industry still dominated by dark tones. The Dauphine was offered in a palette of around 30 pastel colours, an innovation that helped shape its identity and contributed to its success.

To produce the Dauphine on a large scale, Renault used the Flins plant, inaugurated in 1952, which assembled its first Dauphine in 1956 and quickly became one of the major symbols of the company's growing industrial strength. The ramp-up was spectacular: the Dauphine was France's best-selling car from 1957 to 1961 and was also manufactured or assembled in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. With that international expansion, Renault embraced a new ambition, to move beyond being a French carmaker and become an international automotive player. The United States was a major challenge where Renault saw enormous potential, and exports grew rapidly until the momentum faded a few years later, an experience that nonetheless changed how Renault viewed international markets and the expectations of motorists around the world. The Dauphine also had an unexpected life on the other side of the Atlantic: in 1959 it provided the basis for the Henney Kilowatt, an electric car developed for the US market, a niche experiment that was a remarkable early forerunner of the research Renault would later pursue in electric mobility.

Seventy years after its launch, the Dauphine tells the story of Renault's transformation from a company rebuilding itself into one entering a new dimension. The 4CV had enabled the automaker to reconnect with its customers, and the Dauphine gave Renault a new ambition: to think bigger, go further and move faster. Within a decade, the two iconic models helped drive the company's revival, make cars accessible to a wider audience and open a new chapter in its industrial development. Renault says their shared ambition, making mobility accessible to as many people as possible while preparing for the changes of tomorrow, still inspires the group eight decades later.