Renault Colorale
| Renault Colorale | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Overview | |
| Manufacturer | Renault |
| Production | 1950-1957 |
| Assembly |
Boulogne-Billancourt, France Gennevilliers, France |
| Body and chassis | |
| Class | Mid-size / Large family car (D) |
| Body style | 4-door station wagon 2-door van 2-door station wagon 2-door truck |
| Layout | FR layout |
| Powertrain | |
| Engine |
I4 2383 cc, 48 hp (36 kW) I4 1996 cc, 58 hp (43 kW) |
| Transmission | 3-speed manual |
| Dimensions | |
| Wheelbase | 2,680 mm (105.5 in) |
| Length | 4,270 mm (168.1 in) |
| Width | 1,980 mm (78.0 in) |
| Height | 1,750 mm (68.9 in) |
| Curb weight | 1,620 kg (3,571 lb) |
| Chronology | |
| Predecessor | Renault Primaquatre |
The Renault Colorale is a mid-size car (though by the European standards of that time it will have been seen as a large family car) manufactured and marketed by Renault for model years 1950-1957. Featuring the profile of a small station wagon/estate, the Colorale's styling recalled successful Renault designs of the 1960s. The Colorale was not a commercial success.
Recently nationalised, and enjoying booming sales with their Renault 4CV, Renault management at the end of the 1940s sought to move their business upmarket. Company strategy called for a robust functional vehicle, equally at home in the cities or the countryside, and appealing also to overseas markets in remaining parts of the French empire. With colonial and rural customers in its sights, the car was named Colorale, a portmanteau of the (French) words ‘COLOniale’ and ‘ruRALE’.
Body panels were stamped and assembled by the Chausson company at Gennevilliers before final assembly at the Renault Billancourt plant. The front of the car closely resembled that of the smaller Renault 4CV, indicating a conscious intention to give different Renault models a 'family look'.
With its robust spacious body and the option of four wheel drive the Colorale was in some ways an even more radical design than the innovative and commercially more successful Renault hatchbacks that would appear in the 1960s: the Colorale in several important respects recalled the SUVs which would proliferate towards the end of the twentieth century. In the 1950s, however, the French marketplace was less welcoming to the Colorale which was slower and less elegant than other cars in this price bracket. In French overseas territories customers appear to have been less resistant to the radical new Renault, but it was nonetheless the more conventional Peugeot designs that gained a more enduring foothold in the French colonies and in the new independent states which succeeded some of them.
...
Wikipedia