Home » The Subtle Magic Of Car Identification

The Subtle Magic Of Car Identification

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I once read something about a study that found that when car geeks see a car, the parts of our brains normally used to recognize faces is activated, which is why so many of us can identify different types of cars so quickly. This part of our brain is extremely powerful, which may be at the root of amazing things like how many of us can see a car we’ve never seen before, and make shockingly good guesses as to its country of origin, era, and who built it. These are pretty subtle things, but they seem obvious and second-nature after a while. I felt that today when I saw a picture of a prototype Renault from the 1960s, Project 118.

Now, this is not a car I’d seen before; it never made it into production. This started as a design study for something roughly based on the Renault 4, but a bit larger and more up-market. Interestingly, Renault reached out to Ghia for the design work and building a prototype, based on the R4 platform/running gear.

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Ghia made something that fit so well with the Renault design aesthetic that I immediately clocked it as a Renault, which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. Why did this immediately scream “Renault?”:

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For a ton of reasons, a glance at this car, a car that I’ve never seen and was never even produced, somehow triggered in my brain all of the Renault cues. The car that this eventually became, the Renault 6, also feels very Renault, but somehow a bit less than this prototype.

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So what exactly is it that makes my brain feel that Renaultitude? I think there’s a few visual cues that are key.

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The rear I think holds a lot of answers. The angle of the back there, I’m not exactly sure why, but no one other than Renault would make the rear of the car at that angle – especially with that large C-pillar with the character line that angles the opposite way, to the rear. That is all, somehow, unmistakably Renault.

I mean, look at a later Renault 5 and you can still feel this car in it:

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The semi-skirted, flattened-top rear wheel arch: that’s also wildly Renault. The rear that is slightly higher than the front? That’s not just Renault, that’s bigger, that’s French, because Citroën does that, too.

Also French is this interior:

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No other country thinks of interiors like this: fun patterned upholstery over the simplest possible beach-chair-like tube-frame seats; a monospoke steering wheel; a crazy shifter that emerges from the dashboard; a combination of almost fanatical austerity but somehow wildly stylish – this is an interior that could have only come from France. And I could tell that within seconds of seeing this. It had to be either a Citroën or Renault.

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This is a really charming little car, and especially in its oddly unadorned state, in that very neutral light gray, it sort of feels like the physical representation of general Renaultness, like some sort of platonic spirit-car that gets conjured up every time a designer sits down to design a new Renault.

Brains are amazing!

(photos: Renault Classic)

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Torque
Torque
27 days ago

Re: “This part of our brain is extremely powerful, which may be at the root of amazing things like how many of us can see a car we’ve never seen before, and make shockingly good guesses as to its country of origin, era, and who built it. These are pretty subtle things, but they seem obvious and second-nature after a while. ”

Holy shit before reading any further I guessed the lead picture was probably some sort of Renault from the 1960s!

Theotherotter
Theotherotter
30 days ago

My partner and some of my friends find it wondrous or baffling or any number of other things, but yes, I could tell them that much about this car (which I also have never seen) within five second of looking at it.

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
30 days ago

I have never owned a Renault or a Citroen. I did have a Peugeot 504 in the late-70s/early 80s.

The second to last picture in your article, of the dashboard, blew my mind. The Peugeot had a few oddities, but wow, nothing like that steering “column” and whatever that thing sticking out to the right? Parking brake or ???

That all seems like RTFM is a thing.

Guillaume Maurice
Guillaume Maurice
1 month ago

At first glance for my French eyes it looked like the basard child of a 4L ( Renault 4 ) and a R5 ( Renault 5 ) with some hints of the R6 ( Renault 6 ) it was gong to be.
It clearly screamed RENAULT to me, even if I couldn’t place it at first.

Ford_Timelord
Ford_Timelord
1 month ago

I think its been noted before how some of the design notes of this period of Renault including the flattened rear wheel arches, rear tailights and tailgate from the R5 and odd rear side windows were apparent on my beloved Tercel 4wd Wagons. The nose also has similarities.

Morgan Thomas
Morgan Thomas
1 month ago

It screamed ‘Renault’ to me immediately!
And what’s even better about that steering wheel is that it appears to be all one continuous bit of tubing, with the steering column bending to become the spoke of the wheel, then bending again to form the rim of the wheel, then looping right around with a final little bend to meet the spoke and complete the circle!

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