One of the world’s oldest and most familiar car brands is Renault. With its distinctive diamond logo, this is one of very few car manufacturers that can trace its history back as far as the 19th Century, and which very quickly expanded beyond its French beginnings to have a major influence across the globe.
From its earliest days as the launchpad for a visionary young engineer, through years of state ownership and control by figures both inspired and controversial, Renault has charted a convoluted course through history, but always managed to claim a major slice of the market – and not just in cars.
Today, Renault maintains its place among the biggest names in the car industry, having in recent years lurched from triumphs to troubles and back again. The brand remains oh-so-French but appears to be on the way up once again.
So who or what is Renault?
The Renault company is one of the oldest in the automotive industry, founded in 1899 as Société Renault Frères, the ‘Renault Brothers’ being Louis, Marcel and Fernand. Louis was a skilled young engineer and built the cars for his business-savvy brothers to sell.
Within five years, the company was building its own engines rather than buying them from elsewhere. It then received a big boost when it sold several vehicles for taxi use. Soon, most taxis in both Paris and London were Renault vehicles, while several were also sold to the US, and they were also used extensively by the French military in the first world war.
Competing in motorsport brought Renault great success but also tragedy when Marcel was killed in 1903. Four years later, ill health forced Fernand to retire, and he died in 1909. Now in sole charge, Louis renamed the company as Société Automobiles Renault and swiftly grew it – he was keen on innovation and quickly adopted the moving production line techniques made famous by Henry Ford.
Renault also diversified – into buses and trucks, and then aero engines where it enjoyed great success, while in the First World War ammunition and military vehicles were also produced, earning Louis France’s highest medal, the Legion de Honneur. Then once the war ended the company added tractors and industrial machinery to its output.
By the 1930s, Renault was producing two separate types of car: an ‘Economy’ line with four-cylinder engines, called Quatre; and upmarket six-cylinder models, called ‘Stella’. There were eight different body styles available, in addition to custom designs built by specialist coachmakers. Renault was selling close to 46,000 cars a year, many of them in London.
Renault even started producing aircraft, called Caudrons, and took a stake in national airline Air France, until the Great Depression caused the company to get rid of its extra businesses and focus on automobiles, while crushing worker disputes along the way.
Renault’s factories were heavily bombed during the second world war and, as soon as it ended, Louis Renault was accused of collaborating with the German forces and arrested. The government of General De Gaulle requisitioned the company’s plants and, after Louis died in prison while awaiting trial, the Renault company was nationalised.
Renault again made rapid progress, despite the French government trying to convert it to a manufacturer of only commercial vehicles. The rear-engined 4CV small car of 1946 proved a success, as did the Renault 4, launched in 1961 as a rival to Citroën’s 2CV. By 1970 the likes of the 6, 12 and 16 had boosted Renault’s annual production to more than a million cars.
The 1970s and ‘80s saw further expansion. The company launched the widely praised Renault 5 small car, acquiried sports car maker Alpine, worked with Peugeot and Volvo on projects, and created a new subsidiary in Romania called Dacia. A partnership with US maker AMC, which owned Jeep, led to Jeeps being sold in Europe.
Renault also innovated, with its Espace of 1984 kicking off a craze for people carriers. But by the mid 1980s, the company was losing money at the rate of a billion francs a month. The government installed a new chairman and a wave of cuts halved the losses, before the chairman was assassinated by French terrorist group Action Directe in 1987. The cuts continued, including the sale of AMC to Jeep later the same year. A plan was hatched to merge with Swedish brand Volvo in 1990, but Volvo backed out.
The new slimline Renault continued to launch well-received cars, not least the replacement for the 5, the Renault Clio. The Laguna large car, launched in 2000, and its mid-sized sister the Megane also earned wide praise, by which time Renault had been privatised and had entered an unprecedented partnership with Japanese maker Nissan.
The architect of all this was CEO Carlos Ghosn, whose cost-cutting transformation of the company made him a star of the automotive industry. That didn’t last, however. Ghosn resigned in 2018 after being arrested for fraud in Japan. In a bizarre tale, he eventually escaped to his home country of Lebanon after being smuggled aboard an aeroplane inside an audio equipment box…
Renault gave up its controlling interest in Nissan in 2023, although the two companies continue to work together on vehicle projects around the world.
What models does Renault have and what else is coming?
The current Renault range includes a couple of models with long-lived names, as well as two classic badges making a return.
The Clio remains as one of the most successful superminis and the current version, which went on sale in 2019, is the fifth generation. These days you can only buy it as a five-door hatch with hybrid power. It remains a very popular car, scoring a top A mark from The Car Expert’s unique Expert Rating Index.
Renault’s mid-sized car for many years, the Mégane, was reborn in late 2022 as the Mégane E-Tech, a crossover-style hatchback with a full-electric drivetrain. It, too, has plenty of fans, another with an Expert Rating grade of A.
Renault offers plenty of combustion-engined SUV models, the longest-lived being the Captur. Sitting on the same underpinning as the Clio, it’s now in its second generation, launched in 2020 and updated in 2024. You can have it with a petrol or hybrid engine, though curiously a plug-in hybrid option was dropped as part of the 2024 revamp. It still matches its sisters with an Expert Rating A mark.
Renault also offers effectively a coupe version of the Captur, called the Arkana. Launched in 2019 it’s rather more aerodynamic with either mid or full hybrid engines. However reviewers concluding that there are better alternatives does see the Arkana let the side down somewhat with only a B-level Expert Rating.
Mid-sized sister to the Captur is the Austral, which was launched in mid 2023 as a hybrid. Its lazy gearbox and lack of excitement also sees it earn only a B expert rating. The Renault range has also been recently bolstered by a coupé-SUV alternative to the Austral, called the Rafale.
Renault is in the midst of an aggressive launch programme at present and a new EV arrived in 2024, reviving the Scenic badge – the former MPV is now an electric SUV which has earned widespread praise, winning the European Car of the Year prize and best medium car in The Car Expert Awards for 2025.
Current Renault range on our Expert Rating Index
The most anticipated arrival from Renault, an all-new Renault 5, has matched the achievements of its sister, locking up the 2025 European Car of the Year trophy and best small car in The Car Expert Awards. It’s now a five-door fully-electric supermini, with the first examples arriving in showrooms in early 2025.
The Renault 5 will also get a city car sister, as the even older Renault 4 badge will return once again as another all-electric vehicle, expected to offer two battery options and two power outputs. It is set to go on sale sometime in 2025.
Where can I try a Renault car?
Renault is a mainstream manufacturer so there are plenty of dealerships across the country in which to check out the model range, but not as many as there once were. The company had 144 outlets before mid 2023, when a severe rationalisation programme reduced the numbers to around 115.
What makes Renault different to the rest?
Renault is one of the few brands that combines technology, style and practicality to a high degree of success.
While the brand has always had an image that is sporty, with its high-profile motorsport programmes, and full of innovation, from creating new mainstream model designs such as the people carriers to quirky electric vehicles such as the single-seat Twizy, it also produces generally quality vehicles that are seldom considered dull.
Particularly with recent launches in the electric market, Renault is a company that appears to be ticking all the right boxes.
A Renault fact to impress your friends
While its recent efforts in Formula One have not made headlines either with its own car or the more recent Alpine-branded version, Renault enjoys a near-50-year history in the sport.
The company introduced turbochargers to F1 in 1977 and its engines have powered 11 world champions, including Brits Nigel Mansell in 1992 and Damon Hill in 1996.
Summary
Renault is one of the best-known car manufacturers around and while it has at times endured a chequered history, it today continues to exert a great deal of influence way beyond its French homeland. With brand-new models such as the Scenic and Renault 5 being very well received, the ‘Regie’ appears to be on the up.
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