Vilvoorde Renault Factory

Renault Industrie Belgique S.A. / Renault Industrie België N.V., officially shortened with the acronym RIB, opened in 1931 as an auto-assembly plant owned and operated by Renault in Vilvoorde on the northern edge of Brussels in Belgium. It was the manufacturer's first plant to be located outside France.

Automobile production at Vilvoorde came to an abrupt end in 1997, with the loss of approximately 3,500 jobs, and in the face of much public opposition from and on behalf of those affected.

Production began in 1931, the plant’s first year of operation, although at this stage only a few thousand cars per year were made. The models in question were the manufacturer's Monaquatre and Primaquatre. The plant's first volume model, introduced in the late 1930s and still assembled at Vilvoorde until 1955, was the Renault Juvaquatre, which competed in a hotly contested market segment against cars such as the Peugeot 202 and the Opel Kadett. Production of the estate version of the Juvaquatre, badged as the Renault Dauphinoise, continued until 1960. In the meantime a second volume model, the new rear engine Renault Dauphine was added to the lines. By 1960, Vilvoorde had become very much more than an assembly operation, producing its own axle components, exhaust systems and body panels.

At the start of the 1960s the old Dauphinoise was finally taken out of production, to be replaced on the Belgian production line by the much more modern Renault R4 (later rebranded as the Renault 4). In 1962, Renault installed a third production line which was used to assemble the Rambler-Renault Classic. This was one of several collaborations between Renault and American Motors during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1967, the Classic was replaced at the Vilvoorde plant with the Rambler-Renault Rebel. In volume terms, however, the Renault designed models outnumbered the Rambler designs, with overall production in the late 1960s, running at around 100,000 cars annually. By that time, the Dauphine had been taken out of production, to be replaced on the Vilvoorde lines with the Renault 6.

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