Tuesday 5th January 1965

The Renault 16, one of the 1960s most important cars, was introduced to the world and the press in a presentation on the Côte-d’Azur. The monocoque body housed Renault’s first front-wheel-drive arrangement on a large car; although unlike the BMC equivalents the engine was mounted longitudinally. However, the unit was thoroughly modern, with an aluminium cylinder head and block and wet liners, and it would go on to power millions of Renault vehicles well into the 1990s. The R16 was a great success, with 1,845,959 R16s produced during a production run of 15 years. The car sold well in most of Europe, winning praise for its spacious and comfortable interior. It was marketed in the United States, but was not successful and only a few were sold. Interestingly, Citroën was designing an extremely similar car in the early 1960s (Projet F), to bridge their own enormous market gap between the tiny 2CV and luxury DS models. When Citroën realized that Renault was introducing the R16, they took the unusual step of cancelling Projet F.Due to the similarity of construction, rumours of Renault conducting industrial espionage abounded, but were never proven. The R16 was the first Renault-model to win the title “The car of the year”.