Au revoir ma Dauph'
Today, after almost twelve years, I said goodbye to our Dauphine. It is the classic that I have driven the most and possibly the one that I have dedicated the most hours. Probably I have felt more passion for my other cars that have not worked in decades than for the Dauphine but I will definitely miss it.
The first car my father had was a Dauphine. My brother-in-law Pep also had fond memories of another one his godfather used to visit him when he was a kid, maybe that's why we decided to buy one together.
I will always remember the trip to pick it up near Lyon. We had bought it at an Ebay auction. I stuck the trailer to the Opel Astra in direction to France, but before I stopped in Manresa, where Antoni Tachó had agreed to grant me an interview at the AUSA facilities. Antoni told me the story of the company that was born to build the PTV, a small convertible that struggled to make a dent in the market just when the SEAT 600 began to be manufactured in large quantities. In the factory I could see a PTV250 and the prototype of the PTV400, a larger car that never came into production.
It was already getting dark when I reached my destination. Although it was winter and in the Isère region it is quite cold, the Dauphine engine fired up almost instantly. Its owner was reluctantly getting rid of it, it was a car he used daily, but just a few weeks earlier, on the same ramp where the Dauphine was parked now, his father had slipped and died of a hit in the head so he needed to sell the car to get ahead. During the first years we didn't manage to remove the smell of tobacco that impregnated the interior.
Later, as the front seats upholstery was in poor condition, taking advantage of a trip to Paris, we decided to buy a new one, identical to the original one. Thus, in addition to improving the appearance of the interior we also managed to eliminate that unpleasant odour.
The Dauphine, or better “la Dauphine”, as it is known in France, is a very popular car, in fact when you take it out to the street there is never missing some elderly person who approaches to remind you that in their times it was known as the "widow women car". The bad reputation of its stability seems to be justified, at least that's what my father has always told me as he was about to kill himself when he went flying down a ravine with his Dauphine. I have always driven it as if it was a delicate piece of museum, I have never put it to the limit, and so I have been able to enjoy the road without problems. However, older people always tell me stories of what they used to do so that their Dauphine kept the wheels on the road; sacks of sand, cement, steel plates ... it seems that they put everything in the trunk less luggage.
After bringing it from France we had to make it a historical vehicle new documentation. Apart from all the paperwork we did a deep revision, changing among other things brakes, clutch, exhaust, etc. Most of the Dauphine on the Spanish roads were manufactured by FASA in Valladolid. As ours came from France, when classified as historical, it was approved to keep some curious things such as its yellow front lights, the red rear indicators and the rear license plate lamp in the centre of the plate. By the way, for its first MOT we had to improvise an emergency solution since we had broken the plate light it and the new one had not yet arrived. In the battery case there is still the inscription S1 F 367 which means that the original paint was synthetic (S), Renault brand (1), the car was made in Flins (F) and colour code was 367 (butterfly yellow).
Unfortunately when we bought the car the exterior had been re-sprayed in an aftermarket pistachio green while the interior still retained the original colour. The wheels were the same green, which I personally considered an awful sight. Initially we painted them the in usual metallic grey, but as the car came with half of the original blind wheels and the other half with holes, like those of the R8, when I finally found the missing wheel, an original one that still it retained its original cream colour, we painted them all that way.
With time we made some improvements. The rear lights, for instance, were not in bad shape, but we found some new ones in Argentina online and we changed them. The door sills were painted in black because one day, in the garage, a jack made a hole in one side, to repair it we thought it would be difficult to match the same green so we preferred to finish them in black.
The Dauphine is not as popular as the 2CV or the 600 but it draws attention wherever it goes. Aesthetically I find it attractive, the front seems to smile you, the way its curves surround the headlights and that bumper that looks like a mouth, is really nice. In its time it was a great success for Renault, also it was made in Argentina and even Alfa Romeo manufactured it in Italy under license. In total more than two million units were produced, many of them were sold in the United States, where it even was the best-selling European car for a while.
Ours had indeed little use while we owned it. For some time it had electrical problems. The 6V battery discharges quickly if you do not disconnect it when you do not use the car.
Sometimes the car fired up without problems and after 5 km it started to give tugs, sometimes I had to walk back and pick it up with the trailer. We put a new regulator but it did not stop giving problems until an old school mechanic fixed it with a used regulator that he found in a corner of his workshop.
Finally, as there was no room left in the garage, we decided to sell the car. One day talking about the Dauphines with my father he told me that the one he had owned had previously belonged to a famous film director who often used it to go from Barcelona to Madrid. I was curious so I searched for information about Francesc Rovira-Beleta. I discovered his cinema, which today has a great documentary value, since it collects many images from everyday life as he used to film in the very street. In fact I watched some of the films he directed at the time I assumed he owned my father’s Dauphine to see if I could recognize it in any image.
If I found a grey Dauphine often featured in the background of the images, like the one you can see in the screenshot, unfortunately I was not able to read the number-plate. Thanks to the Dauphine I learned that Rovira-Beleta was nominated for an Oscar twice, in 1963 and 1967. The first time he competed against Fellini, he always thought that if he had competed with the first film against the rivals of the second one he would have taken the statuette. His cinema, although dodged Franco's censorship with a certain dose of self-censorship, without entering into political questions, was silenced since it reflected a reality that did not fit the image the official propaganda intended to show of the country, surely that is why nowadays he is not as well known as other directors of the time.
Our Dauphine has never been a film star, a couple of times we were offered to rent it for a film, in a movie it should be the main character's car, a politician of the time who played a leading role in the transition. Today I said goodbye to it, curiously near Valladolid where the Spanish Dauphine were made. Being back with the empty trailer brought me a strange feeling, I will certainly miss the Dauphine, or as the French say “la Dauph”. Au revoir ma belle Dauph '.
