5k: Smile Machine: 1959 Renault Dauphine
There is something about the ability of a car with a smile on its face to put a smile on your face. Nobody did a better car face than Renault with their Dauphine – the French answer to the VW Beetle, Fiat 500 and Morris Minor. The Dauphine has a pleasantly mustached front end with a preposterous bass mouth grin instead of the evil smile of the evil frown on its cousin —the R8. Find this 1959 Renault Dauphine for sale in Paradise, CA for $4,200 via craigslist.
The Dauphine uses a rear-engine rear-drive setup similar to the VW Beetle, but it eschews the aircooled flat-4 setup and instead runs a more conventional inline-4 watercooled setup…but the Ventoux engine is anything but conventional when examined closely.
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| image credit: Aviator12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Renault_Ventoux_engine_%281956%29.jpg |
The Renault Ventoux is a odd duck – uses a three main bearing cast iron crankcase with an aluminum head that houses a laterally setup camshaft that actuates the valves and spins a cooling fan located on the flywheel side of the engine. Power was something around 30hp (it varies across many internet sites) and it should keep up with a contemporary VW Beetle or Fiat 500.
The interior of this Dauphine looks to need more work than the exterior – but this is a car you could just drive as is and enjoy the patina, or (as recommended by Bobinott in our last Dauphine post) pour money into it and create a Gordini tribute. Personally, I’d add mud flaps, rally stickers and cover the front end in a few vintage Cibies.
See a cooler Frenchwagen Freetle? tips@dailyturismo.com
No link…also, couldn't find it on Chico CL.
Click here. It's on SF CL for some reason.
Whoops! Spent all this time being nice to a French car and I forgot the link! Thanks Andrew for pointing it out and thx KBZ for putting up the link. Fixed article.
EIC Vince
This was my first car in 1968, $225 for a '62 if my fading memory serves. Learned how to drive a manual. Fond memory of a first car, that, like my first house, was a piece of junk, if beloved at the time.
One of the quirkiest memories I have every time I see one of these is of walking out my front door in a major American city…….as a seven or eight year old….and seeing a Dauphine parked on the street as I walked to school.
I kinda of liked them.
It was my first car to. Bought one for $10 and sold it a month later for $15. You could see the front tires through the floorboard and goggles were required in the rain. But, for a first flip and when $5.00 was real money…what the heck. If that car only knew 3500 more would follow it its footsteps it would have been proud !