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Renault Dauphine


cooperlola
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[quote user="cooperlola"]Anybody ever run one?  Any knowledge or experience of what they are like in terms of maintenance costs etc?[/quote]

Surely there are none still living!

Back in the seventies in the UK.they were already falling apart with rust

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I used to drive a car with the engine in the rear, in practice it meant I had a 56lb bag of spuds in the luggage compartment at all times as it was so 'light'. It was a NSU which some wag in my then local told me stood for No S**ing Use.[:)]

Happy days !

Hope you do the deal Coops

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Would the NSU be a Prinz?? Quite sought after now. Of course there's the Simca 1100, rear engined and 1300 cc (why is ut called an 1100 then?!) and the ONLY way to make it handle is a 50kg bag of compost in the front (you can see how I discovered that). For a bit of fun you can't beat the Fiat 500, non synchro box and all. Most fun you can have with your clothes on. Approach a bend at 60, go round it at 60, I regret selling my Abarth tunes one to this day, and I sold it in 1987.

Citreon Mahari? Or what about a brand new Portugese built Mini Moke??  The Alpine is a fun car, but do NOT touch the Matra Baghera. They are awful

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We used to service the remaining few NSUs in the North East during the mid 70's.  The Prinz was a bit lightweight but the NSU 1000 TT was quite useful.

What about the Steyr-Puch version of the 500 - Polish rally driver Sobieslaw Zasada was virtually unbeatable driving one during the 60's.  Sobek then went on to drive the works Porsche 911s..... [:-))]

 

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You mean

[IMG]http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t215/f1steveuk/SobieslawZasada.jpg[/IMG]

Wasn't his a 650? Mine was 850, Abarth tuned with a huge oil cooler in the front bumper, although the hand throttle had a habit of  sticking the foot throttle open!!!

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[:D] [:D] [quote user="Anton Redman"]I think you guys may have lost the plot as the original poster is considering a Renault Caravelle. [:(][/quote]

...and the thread is entitled ...?   [blink]

Sid

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Now, lets stay with the Dauphine theme.

Many years ago when I was at college, a chap had one and I do not know why but I quite liked it.

Buying a place in France I thought 'perhaps, when we actually retire, buy one and restore it'.

And there, in a yard, just as you leave the Toulouse - Tarbes Autoroute for Le Fousset is a Dauphine in rust colour. It will be of no use when I retire but if anyone is interested there it is.

Paul

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They are all rust colour - just some have a coat of some other colour over it.

Re the Caravelle, I had a company Caravelle for a few months in the sixties.  I was embarrassed to be seen in it because it was considered far too girly for a bloke to drive.  Got rid of it and got a Fiat 124 instead.  Now there was a car you could really thrash.  Same old rust problem, though.  

So, unless you are actually a hairdresser, I would suggest you try to find a good Dauphine.

Patrick 

 

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Yes, it was normally due to the inside rear wheel tucking under, an unfortunate effect of swing axle suspension. Easily cured by a simple anti-roll bar, preferably with stiffer rear springs, as fitted to the Gordini version, or even by grinding a bit off the standard springs to shorten them and thus lower the centre of gravity and give the back end some negative camber. Other vehicles which were the same were VW Beetles of the era (later ones had improved suspension), early Triumph Herald/Spitfires, and, most famously the Chevrolet Corvair in the USA. Other Renaults were less prone to such things than the Dauphine/Caravelle family - the 4CV (750) was lighter and hence less 'wallowy' and the R8 family seemed better set up with longer radius arms. However the 40/60 front/rear weight distribution of all the rear-engined Renaults meant they could be problematic in inexperienced hands. Dauphines were normally provided with Michelin X tyres but many people replaced them with cheap cross plies which, as mentioned above, were a recipe for disaster.

The Caravelle (also known as Floride in Europe) was certainly very pretty. But it was the archetypal 'hairdresser's' car. My father managed a Renault dealership in Brighton in the 1960s, and the car was very popular among the limp-wristed fraternity there (of which there were plenty, even then, when their activities were frowned upon by the law).

I remember the early Fiat 124 too. Well regarded for some reason, despite being dreadfully underpowered so they had to be thrashed. Like most of the Fiat range, the design and the tooling were sold to Eastern Europe when Fiat had finished with them. Thus the 124 became the Lada; a worse car then even the Skodas of that era.

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I think the Fiat 124 was well-regarded because it's motor gave 60 bhp from 1200 cc., about the same as most 1500-1600cc standard family saloons at the time.  The engine loved to be revved, too, unlike many of the engines in British cars of the day.  The body was lighter than other popular saloon cars like the Cortina, and it had decent handling, when many of its contemporaries still sported cart springs on the rear axle.

Against, it was poorly equipped, noisy, badly finished inside, and it rusted like all Italian cars of the day.  The driving position was designed for the average Italian male, who, apparently, had short legs, so you either had to drive with your knes up round the steering wheel, or with your arms stretched out to maximum reach. 

Many years later I was taken out as a passenger in a new Lada.  The motor of the Lada was sluggish, rough, and noisy.  Back axle noise was awful.  I suspect the Russians modified everything to suit their roads, climate, poor petrol and lack of servicing facilities, so although it looked similar, underneath it was not the same car.

Patrick

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