Today's piece of useless information, the Renault 4L, introduced in 1961 was so called because it was classified as having 4CV fiscal, due to its engine size of 747cc (My Austin is silmilarly classified on its "carte grise") The 'L' designation referred to the word "Limousine" and its six light body. Nothing to do with "Quatre Ailes" (four wings)although it does have the nickname "Quatrelle" which is a French way of saying 4L. They made more than 8 million of them.
We had about six Renault 4's over the years, they were real workhorses. My father referred to them as his wheelbarrow. Once he was making a paved patio for my mother to put a garden swing on. Dad had a word with an old school pal who was in charge of the local Council yard. He was told that he could go and get as many old paving slabs as he wanted. We set off in my mothers R4 to the Council Yard and duly loaded aboard as many 3' x 2' concrete slabs as would fit. For good measure we helped ourself to several bags of sand on which the slabs would be bedded. Closing the tailgate of the R4, ready to make our getaway, my Dad thought that we had a puncture in the rear tyres. They were relatively low pressure and the truth of the matter is that the weight aboard had flattened them so the car was almost running on the rims. We decided to crawl about half a mile to a garage where the tyres could be pumped up. Such was the weight aboard, the rubber over-riders on the rear bumper were catching on the ground. With the tyres pumped up to a huge pressure we managed to get home and had to quickly remove some of the load before my Mother saw how the car had been abused.
The first R4 was the best, it was white and had a full length folding sunroof which my Mother referred to as the 'lid'. As kids, my brother and myself used to stand up in the back with our heads out of the sunroof doing impressions of Hitler making Nazi salutes. Unfortunately they don't like you doing that sort of thing nowadays.
I also remember a 3 speed 6v one my mother had with a full length sunroof. I drove it back to Harrogate from Ullapool in one go in 1968 IIRC. I was exhausted and hallucinating by the time I got home at about 2.00am having set off at 9.00 the previous day!
I started teaching Helen to drive on a local ex airfield but with the R4 van's gearchange it did not do much for marital harmony. We decided it wasn't a good idea when we went over a roundabout instead of round it. Not long after that we bought an Escort estate which was much easier for a new driver but this time Helen sensibly went down the driving school route.
Over thirty years ago I noticed in a Spark Plug parts list that the same plugs were listed for the R4, the 2CV, and the Fiat 500.
Nearer to fifty years ago I filled my mini van with far too many broken paving flags and struggled to drive the thirty miles home on a dual carriageway. Anything over 35 miles an hour and the mini refused to go in a straight line. The back end just swung like a pendulum.
I had a 1966 one back in the 1970's as a student. Six volt electrics and three speed gears, plus a tiny 4 cylinder engine - sound familiar ? For some reason I was always popular when anything needed shifting. One day with a 3 kW diesel generator in the back (don't ask) I discovered the meaning of terminal understeer on a wet and winding welsh road. Fortunately there was an ungated field entrance in the direction the car had decided to go, and I missed the dry stone walls each side - phew !
My beginning of term journey from Hampshire to Gwynedd was 250 miles, which took about 7 hours non-stop. It then used to take a day or two for the temporary deafness to wear off. I'm not sure that journey times would be much different these days.
