Renault Dauphine at the Josefuv Dul Car Show, Liberecky kraj, Bohemia(CZ), 2015

One could easily get the impression that the Josefuv dul car show was focused on rear-engine cars in the year that I attended, as there were more rear-engined cars (beyond Skodas) than I've ever seen in one place before. Oddly, I don't recall seeing the two most famous rear-engined models, namely the Volkswagen Beetle and the Porsche 911, represented, but I did get to see a lot of cars that were more obscure (to me, anyway).

The Renault Dauphine, seen here, wasn't so obscure outside of the United States. In spite of its obscurity in America, it was a very commercially successful car worldwide. Renault claim that they produced 2,150,738 Dauphines between 1956 and 1967, and actually managed some initial success in the U.S., with U.S. sales peaking in 1959 at 102,000 units.

Renault were so puzzled by the car's sudden drop in U.S. popularity after 1959 that they commissioned an internal study, which was subsequently misplaced for several years, and ultimately irrelevant by the time it was located.

An honest assessment, from an American perspective, would be that the Dauphine's obscenely slow acceleration, at 37 seconds 0-60 would have been the kiss of death in a market in which the Volkswagen Beetle was considered a slow car, with 0-60 m.p.h. times in the 17-28 second range, depending on the engine. For that matter, even the East German Trabant 601 was claimed to be capable of 32-second 0-60 times, and pre-war V-8 Fords could also beat the Dauphine very easily. By the 1960's, most American cars could get from 0 to 60 in well under 15 seconds, and a number of completely mainstream cars like the Chevy Impala and Ford Galaxie could achieve under 9 seconds. This is without muscle cars being taken into account.

In spite of the Dauphine being a very light car, at only 650kg (for comparison, the VW Beetle was around 800-840kg), the reason for its terrible performance was probably the 845cc "Ventour" I-4 engine, which only put out 27-36 horsepower. The optional 36 horsepower variant could achieve a 0-60 time of 30 seconds, which still wouldn't be competitive in the U.S. market. The fact that the Dauphine could top out at normal highway speeds of 112Km/h and 130Km/h, respectively, simply wasn't relevant if it was too hard to accelerate in U.S. traffic, in spite of a bizarre Road & Track article that claimed the opposite. The bottom line is that 37 seconds 0-60 is too slow.

Having said this, the Dauphine was quite successful in other markets, so much so that Renault ended up producing it at branch plants in 13 countries outside of France. As stated above, total production was 2,150,738, so in the end Renault didn't really need the U.S. market.