(Editor’s note – One of the neatest things about BangShift, in our eyes anyway is that people from all over the globe tune in each day to see what’s happening here. French reader Roman Bertin is one of those people and he submitted a neat roadside find that he spied while cruising in the French countryside. His words are below.)
Recently, while watching at the last ‘roadside find’, I remembered one I did a few years ago when driving back home, in the back country. Here is one of the most unexpected crossbreed between our two car cultures, but it actually makes sense. The Jeep Willys and the Renault 4L are equally iconic, revolutionary and useful cars, but also strong symbols of liberation here in France.
The first one from German occupation, the second one from the conformist way-of-life of pre-1968 society. Anyway, the dude who mixed it probably did not think like the car design student I am so he just decided to build by himself the vehicle he needed (which seems to has been used as a tow-truck or something similar). He well saw that he could obtain something correct considering the almost similar width of these two cars. And he actually did! To my eyes the proportions are OK, and by combining the 4L “living space” to the Willys off-road capabilities, he “designed” a legitimate precursor to the SUV crossovers. Greetings from Paris, Roman (PS : sorry for my English).
Roman, your English is better than mine! – ed.
A little paint and it’d be pretty nice looking.