Renault Alliance: Still On the Scrapheap of History
While the US government was saving Chrysler with the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act of 1979, American Motors had to go to the French government for its bailout.
The debut of the AMC-Renault Alliance (essentially a Kenosha-ized Renault 9) in 1983 so impressed the writers at Motor Trend that they gave it the Car Of The Year award that year. 17 minutes later, everyone realized that the Alliance combined the very worst aspects of French build quality and Wisconsin marketing savvy, with predictable sales results. Still, enough Alliances limped out of the showrooms that we can still see them in junkyards every so often. Here’s one I spotted in a Denver self-service yard a few weeks back; looks like it was still in pretty good shape when its last owner finally gave up.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
Wow - yes I still miss my Renault today, and it is interesting to read about the stability of the drive and the experiences of others at the time! I had to double check if mine had 4 wheel drive because I was always in awe at how great mine was to drive in the snow, ANY SNOW, all SNOW, and ICE! Amazing! But I think mine had the warped head, because the car would always overheat in summer. Being a non educated person having to make their way in the world I will never know if that was the reason, I just did not want the car to over heat! Everything else was great! Well I managed to get my Oldsmobile Ciera in trade for that and that Ciera ran for a LONG time after I learned and assisted in car repair! I wish it would have been the Renault, but the Ciera did great too, on snow too! Thanks for reading, I will always wonder what could have been of my Renault I owned (83, automatic, sun roof, boy how I loved that sun roof!) - It was a unique car for sure, and I love unique things! I still miss the car!
Worst car I ever owned. I've lost count of the number of times it was in the shop. The timing belt broke--twice!--and trashed the valves. It had overheating problems, oil leaks, water in the trunk, I've forgotten what else. Too bad. It was a fun car to drive. But the quality control was sub-zero.