1985 Renault 4 GTL goes for a drive

well today you join me driving some mad French strangely gear shifted tiny car yes it's a Renault 4 get the umbrella Kish if going it's time for a drive this is a 1985 Renault 4 GTL from 1961 until 1992 this was Reno's answer to the small car their arrival to the 2cv from Citroen and their replacement from the rear engined 4 CV now apologize now about the road noise but this is the only patch of shade I could find this currently 33 degrees outside now development work began on the Renault 4 in 1956 it was taught by my boss Pierre Dreyfus described as his blue jeans car it had to appeal to a lot of different markets it was a dwindling market but there was still a need for the smallholding kind of person he ran a small farm hurtled around the countryside with a tray of eggs in the back and a light kind of thing but more and more people moving to the city becoming more urban and it wanted something more sophisticated more spacious inside that didn't need the same level of attention every thousand miles is some of the routine maintenance on the 2cv so I wanted something a bit more practical a bit more modern so this is where this design came in at launch there were 2 version 2 R 3 and the R 4 which were taxation classes the R 3 was as a 603 CC engine who was far more basic less powerful even had a solid metal C post here and on the most basic runner for you could pay another 400 francs and have this has AG last one so like the 2cv it was cheap they call it the project 350 because it was three hundred fifty thousand francs at launch and it showed a lot of other 2cv traits as well long travel independent suspension torsion being front and rear in this case separate body and frame construction this is a semi-monocoque rather than the full monocoque or full body and frame car like the 2cv is front-wheel drive but now it's water-cooled rather than air-cooled that left hook at the engine and a design brief this car was to have a 600 to 700 CC engine and early cars actually used a development of the four cv Benjen that's not what this sounds like in fact that was quite a major development the seal wood for life system it's got a expansion tank it's got a radiator used antifreeze dip so you didn't have to keep topping the water it wasn't the first thing where you expected losses it is the system we used to know where you seal the system and just refresh it every couple years now initially there were two engine sizes 603 CC and 747 CC but in 1968 it gained the 845 cc engine from the Dauphine that was standing on the super and optional on certain other models and that plugged on as the main engine until 1978 when it's replaced by the Sierra engine not the Ford Sierra engine the Renault Sierra engine which is an 1100 mate cc four-cylinder which became the main power unit in the GTL so this probably has one of those as it's a GTL meanwhile 845 cc engine continued in service until 1986 when it's replaced by a 956 CC engine version of the Sierra unit still with me the Sierra of course had been around since 1962 and carry from the 60 L no doubt you would have noticed I'm sitting on the wrong side of the car for some reason the steering wheel isn't in a place where God on the right it's here on the left the reason being that this is a French car not just a French car but a sure French car which recently came from the South of France where it grew up spent its life and the book full of receipts for it as well all written in French with francs on it and everything now no doubt you've noticed this is Totten tastic in here they were cool deck chairs and all sorts in the old days these things like later 1915 seats are actually more substantial with proper backs proper basis and not like something you'd take out and set up on the beach even though Renault had gone for a traditional car with no proper floor plan front engine water called unit lots of traditional stuff like that they started to go a bit all how weird and you know just Renault really for example door handles where it's the door handle it's here to put your hand inside the door and squeeze and that lets you answer so yeah it's kind of interesting also the door check straps are not inside the door shut as you might expect on a car where they try and conceal the construction of the body that's just a leather strap here bolted to the door bolted to the back of the a post to stop the door swinging too wide also because this is built down to a very tight price sliding windows so pull the little nubbin out slide it back and forth and it locks on the rubber strip when it's in the right place this is very very basic indeed we've got a ton of headroom and a fairly decent elbow room as well considering it's such a small car the way this car is built it's on a platform with the body attached to it so that the chassis is like chassis rails with a base and then the body is kind of attached on top of that so the platform is nice and wide unlike a 2cv with a separate front wings and almost running board effect but she makes it quite a narrow body the four Renault 4 is that full-sized car as you would have expected by the late 50s early 60s so elbow room is good Headroom is amazing in here as this car is from the 1980s it's been quite heavily revised and updated since the original 1960s designs took those big plastic dashboard very unusual shelf situation here because there is a shelf but it's sloping away so you can't get really good much in there you can put a phone in there and yeah you put a phone in there and it fall out the door because it is separated into little segments just flying around but no way of putting a cup in there at all and there's no cup holders of course it's the 1980s so tea shelf is actually a zero I'm gonna zero on a tick shelf in a very long time we have no tea shelf opportunity here whatsoever we kindly put a glass of red wine in there at the top we've got a couple of blower vents which kind of a let fresh air come flooding in what a flooding just drifting in a little bit and there is a vent onto the windscreen itself there's a large central ashtray so both front passengers can you know smoke in the front because it's France in the olden days and there's the tiny little nubbin of a cubby hole here as well just in the center I am aware there's a guy walk into the back of the shop there's nothing I can do about that so he may move around police don't coming and the dashboard dial cluster is a fantastic little weirdness this speedo twitches in kilometers because this is a French cart much as it goes up to 160 which is frankly very optimistic I believe the top sleepers actually read 100 km/h on this particular car it is basically the main dial that's kind of all you get this car is our forty three thousand kilometers which is not far at all which is why it's in such amazing condition that's kind of it as far as dials go there's an absolutely tiny weeny little petrol gauge in the centre and then just a cluster little ramp circles with everything from indicators flashing to risk screen heater is on but that little selection circles it's so 1980s mints is a 1960s car but they are just making the most 1980s looking thing in this little section just here your little stalks are the spindly little tiny things ever you've got it there are wipers on the right-hand side pushing down to turn on indicators on the left and rotate for lights and a hooter of course is sailor horn it's not a scar of course it is and then this is the thing you've probably been staring at the whole time this gear shift is here for a reason it's not just mad frig miss being all French at you the point of this is that there's no full amount of gear shift which means more room in the floor it's a completely flat wall pan this linkage goes over the top of the engine and drops down in front because the transmission is kind of mounted in front of the engine or that part of it is freeze up a whole lot of space inside the car it will talk through it on the move in a moment you do have those rudimentary basic at Peters under here and on the rocker switch a little thingy for hot to cold under here the most basic one button heater ever got to tell whether it works or not it doesn't blow much cold air and there's a huge tray down here absolutely massive amount of space this is like a secondary shelf but again it's at an angle is simple you put bottles of Orangina I guess this car doesn't have a radio there's a slip down here where radio would go and a baffle where a speaker could go but it's not actually a speaker in here or right now beyond that you've got a couple of massive door bins in the front plenty of room for a couple bottles of red wine bodis I guess and not much else she have a quick look in the back it's quite tight in the back but it's a very small car so to be expected the seats are fairly comfortable and again there's a ton of headroom Phillip and will closed in on your shoulders and the doors themselves so that the same crazy little door handles are so tiny to get through it's not a lot of space at all you do have seat belts though in the back which is a nice thing to find but that's kind of it in terms of luxury there's one nice up there for the entire interior and you'll notice some like this is oaky also we drove a couple of weeks ago these wheel wells are visible but they're just rubber coating on their top drumming sounds and in fact the entire floor of the car it just has a big rubber sheet all across the entire thing to protect it from dirt to make it so hos clean effectively and keep the drumming noise down basically the interior really good look in the boot and then take it for a drive [Applause] it's a twist up open on the back and then a bit of a cabin of a boat inside let's move my bag out the way as a rigid load space cover that moves with the back seat but folks don't give you an absolute cavern of a car inside part of the design brief for its practicality it can carry a lot of stuff in this thing this car comes with so much history it's amazing there is the original first aid emergency kit original Renault just paperwork this is going back to a town called Quimper 1985 August 14th walks 1985 is carload registered and there are so many receipts all original Renault receipts in here all from the South of France now putting away in a Renault 4 the first thing you'll notice is that the gearshift is slightly strange this umbr.ella gear change is a little bit unusual to say the least but you have to remember it is basically an H pattern you just the gear stick isn't the regular shape just remember this forward and left four first left them back for a second then back to the middle to the right and for third and straight back 4/4 there go reverse get back to the middle push over to the right and all the way back these cars are not rapid that is a fact even though it's powerful one was nought to 60 in quite a long time this at 104 is currently for sale stone-cold classics of Reutimann Kent check the link in the description below but if it's still in stock but hasn't sold already their duper simply flying out the door at the moment we see what else to have to look at at the moment now originally this is actually only a three-speed gearbox and not only had synchromesh on the top two gears until about a year later when it gained synchro and all three and 1968 you've got a four-speed gearbox like everything else in the market but it's got two different kinds of torsion beams the great ones front side to side and the front ones run length front to back and there are actually series of markers and pegs underneath so row mechanic can actually raise or lower the car off-road use in relatively short amount of time but these were an astonishingly good seller but they were designed to take on things like the people on the 2cv we should also astonishingly good sellers but they sold around 8 million of them incredibly the first million we at first million came by 1966 so just five years it went on to be built in 28 different countries I won't list them all here they'll make it a very long quite dull video but incredibly I didn't know this even Alfre Mayo made a load of them now this thing is light only weighs 600 kilos he's got drum brakes around those so heading into a fast corner I say fast corner it doesn't give you a massive amount of confidence that you're going to slow down in time tires squeaking at 30 kilometers per hour which is about 20 miles an hour I must admit I thought this car was gonna be an 845 cc car rather than the 1108 so I researched that and I can tell you that an 845 makes 30 horsepower and fourteen hundred foot-pounds of torque for pound-feet to talk and that gives it an auto sixty time of 38 seconds so I'm fairly sure that this isn't an 845 cc because it does feel a fair bit brisker than that it's still about 20 second nought to 60 I would estimate I try and flush out the 1108 CC spec on the screen in a moment because yeah Tilley this isn't the car I thought it's going to be when I was doing a bit of reading up on it it does bounce along the road like crazy it's hilarious to be in it's remarkable how quickly you adapt to using this spring huge deer shift it's actually quite a nice thing to use because it's so close to the steering wheel you don't really have to take hand very far from the wheel so it's always just there ready and waiting it's a nice short shift or fairly short shift it's quite a cool thing to use really the controls are actually almost disappointingly normal to be honest it takes something a bit madder than this just regular little sideways toggles and stand a little just stalks it's just way too normal I'm I am almost disappointed having been in production for around thirty years that were obviously changes throughout its life at the grill on the front working chrome to paint it to plastic this dashboard obviously changed over the years as did the door handles side trims all kinds of things just evolved it's amazing the thing was still in production though by nineteen 1982 Renault five wasn't far away that Metro was on the market this kind of thing was looking very dated indeed but still it was plugging on but quite surprisingly like the mini there was enough for following for in certain markets that that when I decided that despite the initech despite having you technically been replaced by the newer model the Renault 5 they would continue to run it side by side in tough limited numbers I do find that quite astonishing that I did that and there were a few special editions are unusual versions of this car for example there was a simple I believe it's called which is a four-wheel-drive version there was the clean air which was I believe aims at a military contract but I've repaired down no doors no roof real lightweight a bit like the red Fiat 500 Nordik our thing I forgot the name of pop top my head it does look remarkably similar to that the military contract never happened but they did make a few of them for holiday use of course there was a panel van as well which was at the Berlin jerries favourite we see the French sticks sticking out the roof and the very last one is the last 1000 were known as the bye-bye edition and they all had a little whack on them to that effect in Japan in 2003 there was a bit of an unusual attempt to read year revamp before known as the Ansell laughing and it was a bit like a listen Figaro but based on the Suzuki lap here is the model we didn't go over here and it was a body based on that car which looked remarkably similar to the Renault for getting up to some kind of speed and it does feel a little bit wobbly you can feel it's quite narrow and quite tall and it's on very skinny little tyres that torsion beam suspension is designed more for bad surfaces and unmaintained Road then going for any kind of high-speed effort Wow it leans I wasn't saying wow it leans but it sticks but unlike say like a rover mm the root of p6 which leans but sticks this leans and the most horrible squeaking noises from the tires even at about 30 km/h not a car you want to push I thought if you saw that Cobra go past the other way then that was quite exciting I have always been a bit of a fan of these cars I've always thought just wonderfully French porky but have enough sensibleness to make them quite practical I think it's even come up with a question on the live chat we would I go for a run over for a 2cv and I had to say Renault for has always been my choice given that particular predicament there's a while since I've driven one but I've forgotten just how much fun they are they are not rapid they do leave the GTL has got bigger drum brakes that standard so you can stop a little bit better then in our more cooking model well they are just huge huge fun and if you have got to take a lot of stuff to market then we've got a great big food perfect for it what's not to love well thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed right out in the countryside in what is really a little French icon if you've enjoyed this please it like please our subscribe as always please share with a friend on Facebook if you like this I'll see you again dropping something completely different

Channel: furiousdriving

Views: 240,998

Rating: 4.8408232 out of 5

Keywords: car, cars, blog, vlog, retro, classic, classic car, retro car, motoring, renault, r4, r4 gtl, renault 4, renault 4gtl, renault r4r, compact car, small car, peoples car, french, french car, sixties car, 1985, eighties car, france, road test, test drive, review, car review

Id: trAv2nH-xgs

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020