A while ago I wrote about my favourite one-make racing championship: the Coupe Gordini. There aren’t many more compelling cases to be made for getting a group of young hotshoes together to race an affordable little car on the most challenging circuits France had to offer, but in July 1970 thousands of R8 Gordinis descended upon the Le Castellet circuit in Southern France to bid farewell to the rear-engined wonder that had made the series such a success, and usher in its replacement, a car that on that very same day proved itself ill-suited to the task, yet in all other areas a great car: the Renault 12.
The Renault 12 is yet another of those cars that was everywhere when I was growing up, and as such it’s really hard to believe that there appear to be only 66 examples left on Britain’s roads, but then as with all cars of its era, rustproofing was conspicuous in its absence. The four-door saloon R12 first appeared at the Paris Salon in October ’69, a smart, well-equipped bridge between the boxy R8 and the stylish R16, the fashionably angular car found no shortage of admirers, however the “arrow-like” styling was low on Renault’s list of priorities. You see the 12 had been in development for four years, with a mission statement to become the epitome of usability and efficiency, destined for worldwide production, so while families in France enjoyed the spacious and genuinely comfortable interior, customers of the Turkish or Romanian produced examples might perhaps have felt secure in its robustness and mechanical simplicity (it even came equipped with a starting handle).
Available at first with only a bored-out 1,289 cc version of Renault’s trusty Cléon unit, a performance version was always on the cards, and in 1970 the be-striped Gordini appeared, using the aluminium 1,565 cc unit from the 16 TS, complete with twin double-barrel Webers, five-speed ‘box and servo-assisted discs all-round. The R12 was designed with its engine mounted over the front wheels and therein should really have lain the key to its success in the Coupe Gordini, for such placement in many ways negated the understeer characteristic in more powerful front-wheel-drive cars. Alas, it also made the steering leaden, and did nothing to counter excessive wheelspin, and as that day at Le Castellet would prove, even Gordini’s magic could only just bring it up to par with its tail-happy predecessor.
Though the R12 Gordini would recover, somewhat, from its inauspicious debut, concerns over the front-wheel-drive layout lingered, and these combined with its high fuel consumption affected sales to the point where production ceased in 1974, after just 5,188 examples had been made. But if it had proven slightly too tame for the racetrack, the R12 performed admirably on the road, and in several guises. In addition to the saloon, an estate version and a van were produced, whilst some of Gordini’s tweaks were carried over into the sportier and more luxurious TS model, introduced in ’72. Renault continued production until 1980, whilst in other territories it would last some 35 years, and with sales totalling 2.5 million there could be no questioning the philosophy behind its inception – as rivals from the likes of Simca lay long forgotten and rusted, “Dacia Denems” continued to roll off the line…
In truth I’m not really sure why I chose to write about the R12 this week, for in no regard is it what one could call exceptional, but there’s something about that quirky, modern for ’69 styling that really appeals to me, and at the end of the day I suppose there’s nothing wrong with simply celebrating a very good car, if not a great one.
First published on Discoveryuk.com
