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Dauphine!

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Mickey Richaud

Mickey Richaud

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That is Awesome!!!!!!

I would love one (and know where there is a stash of 14) there was also an electric version. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henney_Kilowatt

Klick and Klack said - (#9) on their worst cars of the Millennium list: "From a historical perspective, it's a shame that the French spent their Marshall Plan dollars on automaking."
"A side impact by a bicycle totaled my Dauphine after only one year."

and

"truly unencumbered by the engineering process

why Lord oh why am I fascinated by goofy quirky cars?





 
Knew you'd like that one!
 
I really wish I had some photos of my old Dauphine.
I bought it when I was 15 (before I had a driver's license) and it was a "woods car" (we lived in the Jersey Pine Barrens.....lots of woods roads and no one seemed to mind).
It only had a hand-brake plus a big crack in the head that spewed coolant (I filled the crack with auto body filler and always carried a bucket of water). I paid $5 for that Renault and it ran pretty good. Worth every penny, in fact.

One time I was racing a friend in another woods car (a Simca Aronde.....I guess we had created our own French racing class). He cut in front of me and I T-boned him. The bonnet for the Renault flew about 50 feet. I hit the Simca in the driver's door and ripped the Simca bench-seat off its mounts, which ripped the passenger door open. After that, we had to drive the Simca with the passenger door roped closed (the driver's door never opened again).
I learned from this experience that even though Renaults are fragile, they were still tougher than Simcas.
Later on, after the Renault engine expired from lack of coolant, I bought that Simca. For $5.
 
Our first "2nd car" when I was growing up was a Renault Dauphine, it was light blue, and this was probably 1965 or so give or take a year. I don't remember it real well because I was pretty young, but I remember we had a one car garage and the Dauphine was parked on the patio. My dad went for the quirky cars, not sure if he had a taste for the quirky, or he simply bought them because they were cheap, the 2nd cars also consisted of a couple VWs, a Renault 10 (which my father loved, and looking at the specs it looks like a pretty good car for the day) and a Mazda RX2, which he also liked very well when it ran right, but it often ran rough and I was a little older when he had the Mazda and remember he had to take it back for service quite often, he might have even gotten a new engine under warranty once.
 
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