Yup - it's a Renault Dauphine. Had one myself back in the early 60s when
I lived in Montreal. Had a unibody construction so the after a couple of
years the winter road salt did some "interesting" things to the
structural integrity of the car. Obviously rear-engined. It even had a
hand crank for the engine. If you look closely you can see the slot for
the hand crank in the rear bumper. The battery was useless in a Canadian
winter and I spent a lot of time manually cranking the bloody thing to
get it to start. The gear shift mechanism had so many convoluted bits to
it, the term "precision" in shifting doesn't immediately come to mind.
Basically the only way you knew what gear you were in was by how fast
(using the term loosely) you were going and by the level on mechanical
whine coming from the back of the car. When I eventually traded it in
for a new car, I had it towed to the dealer but had it dropped a block
away so I could "drive" it to the dealer's lot. With the problems of the
aforementioned road salt, the front suspension mounts were basically
held in place by rust - the wheels were more or less (mainly less)
pointing in the same direction. The dealer offered a cheap trade-in deal
sight unseen for the Renault which I immediately agreed to. Took
possession of the new car. When he walked out to the car with me
afterwards and saw the condition of what had been traded in his jaw
dropped. Don't miss the car a bit.
Cheers, Fred
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