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Light Means Might: A Renault R4 F6 Sinpar Trudging Off Of The Path


Light Means Might: A Renault R4 F6 Sinpar Trudging Off Of The Path

I get a kick out of off-road types. Not real off-roaders. The ones who want you to think that their weekends are all mud and rock crawling, dune-bashing good times. The ones who drive Angry Jeeps and look like their entire Labor Day weekend is sponsored by an energy drink company. Their 20″ wheel/rubber band off-road tire, their large-by-huge 3/4 ton heavy unit and their massive “toy” all combine for a good laugh once the terrain quits playing around. Oh, look, the ground went soft. No wonder your Super Duty sunk all the way up to it’s eight-inch exhaust tip and your Wrangler Rubicon’s tires are coated smooth in mud that has the consistency of creamy peanut butter. Truth be told, for most off-roading, lift kits don’t have to be the biggest thing out there, the tires don’t have to be massive chunks of vulcanized rubber, and you don’t need 850 horsepower to get through what Mother Nature laid out for you.

This homely little thing is a Renault 4 F6 Sinpar fourgonette (van body) and the best way to think of it is a French SUV. That’s not entirely accurate, but…well, it’s French. Outside of the mental Renault R5 Turbo rally machine and some funky Citroëns, we don’t really have much to go on when it comes to French cars except they are small, don’t bring a lot of power to the table, and…well, they have that Gallic charm? I can’t say for sure…closest I’ve come to any French car is a rotting “Le Car”, so I don’t have much to go by in that regard. The largest engine ever available throughout the whole line was an 1100cc four cylinder, and you either had a three or four-speed manual transmission, depending on the year produced. You had the wheels with the three lug nuts and…that’s it. 1,700 pounds at the heaviest, narrow tires that’d cut through the mud…it’s not the all-powerful, destroy everything type of off-roading, but it works. And it’s based further in reality of what most people would consider “off-roading” anymore.

(Thanks to Benoit Pigeon for the tip!)


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2 thoughts on “Light Means Might: A Renault R4 F6 Sinpar Trudging Off Of The Path

  1. Benoit Pigeon

    What’s interesting is that I had actually no clue they build 4×4 Renault 4 (most commonly named 4L as there was previously a different car named Renault 4cv). Apparently less than 600 were build with a Sinbar 4 wheel drive system.
    Even the stock 2 wheel drive standard models could do some quite acceptable off road driving.
    When I worked for an official Renault Alpine dealer, my favorite car to drive around was the shop’s older, more rounded panel van (not an F6 model). I drove a beetle a Mini and even a Ford Fiesta at the time, but the 4L was the best to drive by far. There were no separating wall between the back and front and the box amplified all the sounds the car would produce in a unique way.

  2. tw

    There are still a lot of them in parts of Africa , especially Madagascar , a former French colony .

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