I checked out the Caravelle via Google, what a cool looking car.
For some strange reason my step mother loved Renault's having bought three
of them over the years. This was around 1963 for her first Dauphine on to
around 1969. The early Dauphine for some reason never gave us any
mechanical problems. . .even though Renault had said at one point that the
early Dauphine was not engineered for America's roads (freeways I guess they
were referring to).
The next one was wrecked by my older step brother, a strange design with a
folded looking front over the engine area and the third, the same model
which continued to last on through the years.
My surfer buddy would borrow his parents early Dauphine where we would pack
it up with 4 long boards on top and drive the coast on the weekends looking
for the best spot. It was an automatic and I recall all of us having to get
out to push it up hills above the Sunset Cliffs area. But all of them were
cars that never seemed to have mechanical problems, which I still find
interesting.
My father later owned a larger Renault which ate alternators like they were
going out of style and if he had not punished himself thoroughly enough he
then bought a Renault called something like "Fuego" which was truly a piece
of junk. But again those early Dauphines seemed to be mechanically sound as
far as I remember them never having to go back to the dealer for repair
work.
Kirk
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