Practical, plebeian and cheap, the Renault R6 was a forward-thinking hatch sold in the millions but survivors are very rare today.
Browsing Category French Cars
Matra Rancho: Birth Of The Crossover
Almost nobody realized it at the time, but 1977 was the year “crossovers” were born. They took two very different forms, and it was 20+ years before such vehicles started to become commonplace in the…
Renault Goélette: Martinique Minibus
A gaggle of rare French machines from the OldMotors archive today; once again from Martinique. A trio of Peugeot 403 pickups are fronted by a Renault Goélette minibus, set to take people from Fort-de-France to…
Renault 10: Longer Car, Shorter Story
Just 12,100 Renaults were sold in the U.S. in 1966, down from a dizzying high of 91,000 in 1959. The blame for this lay squarely on the Dauphine and Renault’s haphazard approach to building a…
Flashback: Rue de l’Écureuil en Rouen
A Sunday flashback today to 1970s France and a spectacularly diverse array of machines that were, at the time, just people’s regular cars. So where are we? Rouen, more specifically Rue de l’Écureuil, circa 1971….
Peugeot 305: The Inflection Point
1.7 million of them were made and the car was a staple of European roads for decades. And yet, few people ever seem to talk about the Peugeot 305. It was an excellent family car….
Flashback: The Detective’s Renault 16
A Renault 16 from the OldMotors archives today as we flash back to booming 1970s Abidjan, the cosmopolitan heart of Côte d’Ivoire. Admittedly, it doesn’t look so “cosmopolitan” here, but at the time Côte d’Ivoire…
Bonnet Djet: The Mid-Engined Arms Race
The “D” in Djet was there purely for pronunciation purposes. The car’s creator, the already famous René Bonnet, wasn’t sure if his fellow French would properly pronounce the English-language word “Jet!” the way he wanted….
Flashback: Peugeot 204 en Bourgogne
Today’s photo from the archives goes back to 1960s France, where somebody’s looking for directions to the next winery behind the wheel of a Peugeot 204. Like the wines of famous Côte-d’Or vintner Jacques Seysses,…
Peugeot 604: Sochaux’s Chief Executive
The 604 was Peugeot’s first “executive car,” and the first time in 40 years that it had fielded a large car at all. Though the 402 was a fairly big car for a pre-war European,…
Panhard PL 17: The Two-Cylinder Tiger
Today our feature car is a 1960 Panhard PL 17, a highly unconventional car with its origins in the 1940s and the imagination of talented French engineer Jean-Albert Grégoire. But to really understand where it…
Citroën DS23 Pallas: A Fitting End
It’s been said many times, but it bears repeating – the Citroën DS was probably the most ambitious production car project of all time. The DS23 Pallas, seen here, was the ultimate version of it…