Rare Rides: The 1984 Renault Rodeo, a Plastic Truck for Fun Times
Today’s Rare Ride was a unique offering in Europe in its day, though not an original idea. Simple as pie, it’s plastic, low-powered, and meant for adventure!
It’s a Renault Rodeo, and someone’s taken the trouble of importing this one to California.
Renault’s Rodeo was not an all-original idea. In Europe, demand for fun, simple beach vehicles only took off after the introduction of the Citroën Méhari in 1968. The Méhari itself was a take on another classic, the Mini Moke. The Moke was basic and front-wheel drive and lacked any off-road capability with its tiny wheels and very low ground clearance. The Méhari sat up higher, was front-drive, and had the off-road mini SUV market to itself for precisely two years until the Rodeo came along in 1970.
Initially, the car was named after the company which produced it for Renault and was called the ACL Rodeo. ACL’s initial tie-in with Renault was as a parts supplier for existing Renault vehicles. But the agreement was deepened when ACL built the pickup version of the Renault 4 in the Sixties. The ACL name was replaced by a Renault badge on the Rodeo late in 1976.
The ACL Rodeo 4 was based on the standard Renault 4, and in its original guise had an 845-cc inline-four. Renault expanded the range in 1972 with the more powerful Rodeo 6. It was the same car but used a 1.1-liter engine from the Renault 6 hatchback. All examples were front-drive as standard but could be ordered with a four-wheel-drive system developed by Sinpar.
One more engine development occurred in 1979 when the 6 version replaced its 1.1-liter with the 1.3-liter from a Renault 5. Rodeos 4 and 6 were sold alongside one another from 1972 to 1981, at which point a more modern Rodeo was introduced. Lacking any number association, this “gen two” Rodeo wore a new and more modern plastic body. Post-1981, all Rodeos used the 1.3-liter engine. Four-wheel drive was gone from the model’s second generation but was introduced one more time in 1984, on a single-year trim called Hoggar.
The Rodeo exited production after 1987 without replacement, and the brand would not produce an SUV of any sort again until 2000. Through its versions and developments, only around 60,000 were produced during its 18-year run. Today’s pristine front-drive example was imported from Italy to California by a collector and then put on sale for around $13,000. The post was removed rather quickly, so we might assume it found a new home where it will continue to be treated well.
[Images: seller]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
More by Corey Lewis
Comments
Join the conversation
It may be the post was pulled quickly because the vehicle wasn't imported legally. I can't imagine the California DMV licensing this, even in 1986. My best guess is the "collector" who imported this vehicle is in some kind of legal trouble.
The Mini Moke always makes me think of The Prisoner TV show. Great little runabout for The Village but not for the real world.