The Renault 6: a potted history

By now you should know all about how we found and rescued Bob's Renault 6, but it occurred to me that many of my readers might not know what a Renault 6 actually is. It was never an especially popular car when new and is now an uncommon sight even in its native France. There are only about 20 left in the UK, many of which are fairly recent imports, so it's fair to assume a lot of you will have never seen one or even heard of it. We had no intention of ever owning one and knew very little about them, so some research was called for. What exactly is a Renault 6 and what purpose did it serve?

An odd little car and a very rare sight even in France

The story starts in 1961 with the legendary Renault 4, second only to the Citroen 2CV among iconic French cars. The R6 relates to the R4 in the same way that the Citroen Dyane does to the 2CV, taking the same chassis and clothing it in slightly more sophisticated bodywork to aim it a little more upmarket. In the case of the R6, this is a five-door hatchback that bears a strong resemblance to the larger Renault 16, the car that coincidentally inspired the design of our other classic, the Austin Maxi, so it's best described as a cross between an R4 and an R16. It was launched in mainland Europe in 1968 (a year after the Dyane) but UK sales didn't begin until the following year.

The R4. The same underneath but different on top.

Early cars like ours were mechanically identical to the contemporary R4. The engine is the 845cc water-cooled four-cylinder unit originally designed to be mounted in the rear of the Dauphine, but here it's in the front and driving the front wheels so it's the wrong way round with the gearbox in front of the engine. That results in an amazingly complex Heath Robinson gear linkage: what looks like a normal gearlever sticks out of the front of the engine bay, connected to a horizontal rod that passes through a bracket on the top of the radiator, straight over the top of the engine and emerges through the bulkhead just under the dashboard. Not only that but it has a weird shift pattern too, with a dogleg first and reverse above it where first would normally be. It's quite remarkable to see in action and will take some getting used to or we'll be pulling away backwards by mistake!

The Heath Robinson gear linkage in all its glory

The weirdness doesn't end there. The 845 engine was a little underpowered in the heavier R6 body so in 1970 Renault introduced an 1108cc alternative and this accounted for the majority of sales from then on, although the 845 remained in production alongside it. The 1108-engined cars are a little more conventional: as well as a new gearbox with a normal shift pattern, they were upgraded with front disc brakes to cope with the extra power and the handbrake was moved onto the rear wheels. The 845s however have drums all round and the handbrake, with an umbrella-type lever under the dashboard, works on the front wheels. In pre-facelift form, the two models can be distinguished by their frontal styling: ours is an 845 so it has the numberplate mounted on the panel between the grille and bumper, but the 1108 has an extra grille here with the numberplate moved down onto the bumper.

The pre-facelift 1108 with its extra grille
(By Rundvald - Rundvald, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7007269)

The R6 has that famous Renault quirk shared with the R4 and R16 of the wheelbase being different on each side. The offside is 1.5 inches longer as the rear suspension is by full-width torsion bars mounted one in front of the other, this supposedly giving better ride quality as it means the back wheels don't hit speed bumps at exactly the same time. In typically French fashion and the complete opposite of modern cars, the suspension is very soft with a lot of travel and massive ground clearance, and the seats are well-padded to add to the softness of the ride. The dashboard-mounted gearlever and handbrake allow a completely flat floor and early cars like this had a bench front seat as standard with individual chairs as an option. Ours has a replacement pair of black seats as the rest of the trim is tan, so we suspect it had a bench originally.

That's the gearlever sticking out but you can't even see the handbrake hidden under the dash

This one is further complicated by being an original UK-supplied right-hand drive car. It's very apparent that the R6 was designed to be LHD and the RHD conversion is an afterthought. There is a nice vacant space on the left of the engine for the driving controls to fit into, but instead they're crammed in with everything else on the right where they block access to important things. The clutch cable for instance comes down the right-hand side and is then wrapped around the front in a convoluted fashion so it can connect to the left of the gearbox. Even the routine task of changing the plugs is made difficult as the dynamo is in the way and that can't easily be removed as its mounting bolt also carries the tensioner for the water pump pulley and the radiator interferes with extracting it, and to get the radiator out requires first removing the gear linkage from above it.

A back-to-front engine that's a nightmare to work on

In 1973 the R6 was given a facelift with both models getting a new full-width plastic grille and square headlights, and the indicators and numberplate moved onto the bumper; the 1108cc version became known as the 6 TL while the 845 was the 6 L. Mechanically it would remain unchanged until the end of production, but a further mild facelift in 1978 changed the grille finish from chrome to black. The R6 never really established a strong position, especially after the Renault 5 appeared in 1972, as Renault had the 4, 5 and 6 all overlapping in the same market sector at the same time, along with the slightly larger 14 from 1976. Nevertheless, production in France continued until 1980 and in South America into the eighties, with Spanish-built models lasting right up to 1986. Total numbers are estimated at about 1.5 million,.a paltry figure compared with 8 million R4s, and very few of those were sold in the UK. It wasn't directly replaced, but its role was initially taken by the R14 and then by the five-door version of the second-generation R5 introduced in 1984.

A facelift car showing the new grille. This one is an 1108cc TL model.

 

To sum up the R6, I'd describe it as very French. It's from that era when French cars were completely unlike anything made in any other country and has that uniquely charming Gallic eccentricity also found in cars like the 2CV. In typical French fashion it has some annoyingly idiotic design flaws that make it frustrating to work on, yet somehow it still manages to be loveable. Although quite unlike each other in concept, in many ways the Maxi and the R6 are actually surprisingly similar and equally different from the mainstream of the time: both are front-wheel-drive five-door hatchbacks with unconventional gearboxes and suspension, and both were launched on the UK market in 1969. It may have been an unintended purchase, but the little Renault is a fascinating car and should provide hours of fun and frustration as we try to make it roadworthy again, and learning about its various quirks has been an interesting experience.