Renault
The Renault 4 is one of 498 Renault models in the MotorJury library, the catalogue that sets out to hold every car ever made — production, prototype and concept alike. The record places its introduction in 1961. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Renault 4 properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1960s were the decade of the pony car, the mid-engined revolution and the birth of the modern hot hatchback's ancestors — engineering advanced faster than in any decade before it. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Jaguar Cars Jaguar E-Type, the Volvo Cars Volvo P1800, the Alfa Romeo Alfa Romeo Giulia — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Renault 4 reads like this: the record lists its engine as 603 cc Renault Billancourt engine#603 cc / 690 Straight-four engine / I4 (R3 only) / 747 cc Renault Billancourt engine#747 cc / 680 I4 / 782 cc Renault Billancourt e; kerb weight is recorded at 600–750 kg; drive goes through 3-speed manual / 4-speed manual; the layout is Front mid-engine, front-wheel drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear. Production is recorded at 8,135,424 units, which makes it one of the industry's true mass-production stories.
Within Renault's own catalogue the Renault 4 sits alongside the Renault 10, the Renault 10CV, the Renault 11CV, the Renault 12. The record names the Renault 4CV as its predecessor and the Renault 4 E-Tech as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Assembly is recorded at France: Boulogne-Billancourt / Billancourt / Algeria: Algiers (:de:Construction des Automobiles Renault en Algérie / CARAL) / Argentina: Santa Isabel, Córdoba / Santa Isabel (Indus.
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
What this page cannot yet tell you is what the Renault 4 costs to live with — that is a different dataset. MotorJury's ownership verdicts are computed from federal complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, published per model year as the nightly ingest reaches each car. If this model was sold in the United States, its years will surface in the ownership database; browse it live or price any car yourself with the true-cost calculator.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.