Was it the car that was 'Amazing'? Or the young man who built it?
The year 1899 was a time of great upheaval, with the automotive industry making incredible advances in the short period since Karl Benz completed his ‘Patent Motorwagen’ in 1886.
Nowhere was this upheaval more apparent than in France. Less than six months after introducing a law that operators of motor vehicles were to be licensed, 3852 drivers had indeed obtained a licence. Furthermore, there were already over 600 manufacturers building cars in France that year, and demand was so great that owners were seeing a 100 per cent return on investment by reselling their car to a buyer infected with the motoring bug.
A new book by WA writer Graeme Cocks shines a light on a little-known but important fixture of the early automotive industry from this period in his new book, ‘Louis Renault’s Amazing Type A’.
The author has undertaken meticulous research into the little car that introduced to the world a standardised drivetrain for rear-wheel drive vehicles. Louis Renault didn’t actually invent the differential or the multi-speed transmission, but he did combine them, thus developing the configuration of front-engine/rear-wheel drive through the medium of a longitudinal (‘direct drive’) gearbox and a tailshaft.
We think of this sort of layout as ‘conventional’ now, but in 1899 it was novel, as Cocks explains, retelling the history of voiturettes as background to the development of the Louis Renault’s first car. The Type A was the model that kick-started Renault as a company. Louis was too young to have his name on the paperwork, but he could rely on his older brothers to help establish the business.
A number of anecdotes appear throughout the book, often focusing on the history of the Type A. Fresh from completing the build of the Type A prototype, Louis Renault attended a dinner party and offered his fellow guests a drive in the tiny car. From that one dinner he took deposits for 12 cars, which was no mean feat for someone Cocks describes as ‘socially awkward’.
That Louis Renault could tinker around and build a car that was at the cutting edge of automotive technology when he was barely in his twenties spoke of his drive, creativity and vision. But the book says little about Louis Renault’s character, brought into disrepute even before he was charged with being a German collaborator after the liberation of France in 1944. Instead, Cocks concludes the personal history of Louis with mention of his part developing a tank for the French army fighting in the First World War.
In a preceding chapter, Cocks notes that Renault’s work was copied far and wide, forcing Louis to take legal action against even one of his friends, just to protect his own interests. It was a case of ‘everything old is new again’; the European automotive industry of the early 20th Century was clearly just as entrepreneurial (and sometimes unscrupulous) as the electric-vehicle industry of the 21st Century.
Cocks reveals that Louis Renault himself wasn’t above grinding off the manufacturer’s name on the engine he was using to pass off the engine as his own. That didn’t stop Renault from feeling frustrated at other companies adopting his ideas for their own products – without paying him a cent, and occasionally coming up with improvements in the process.
Not only does the book cover the history of the Type A in considerable depth – without getting bogged down in dry details – it also shares the experience of F1 racer and carsales ambassador Daniel Ricciardo driving a restored Type A owned by Western Australian couple Peter and Robin Briggs. The Type A, along with other cars in Briggs’ collection, is housed at the York Motor Museum.
Ricciardo found driving the Type A – producing less than 2hp from its air-cooled De Dion engine – to be scary. As Cocks explained, the Renault Type A’s brakes were essentially inadequate, the steering (through a tiller) was very direct and it is easier to bring the car to a standstill to select a different gear than attempting a change on the move. Reverse gear was an optional extra – one not fitted to the Type A (chassis #110) Ricciardo drove.
The other highlight of the book revolves around the owners’ entry in the 2017 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run at the wheel of the Type A.
And if you are keen to know more about ancient Renaults and the actual workings of the ‘direct drive’ gearbox, there’s plenty of information covering those topics in the appendices.
The book is a quality soft-cover production that is available online for the affordable sum of $45, making it an excellent Christmas present for the jaded motoring enthusiast in your life.
Keyword: Book review: Louis Renault’s Amazing Type A