RENAULT 4 EXTRA PRODUCTION

These are some pictures kindly contributed by Vincent Sevriere of Renault 4 Production at different periods at Billancourt. Below the pictures is an account of Irish Renault 4 productions.

This 2003 account comes from Niall Lacey, one of the workers from the Irish Renault 4 factory in Wexford. Until 1986, the (Republic of) Ireland franchise was held by Smiths who operated their assembly plant on the Naas Road from 1962 in what is now the An Post Mail Distribution Facility. Production commenced in Wexford from 1972. The building in Wexford, later called Wexford Electric, was demolished in 2000 to make way for a new apartment complex.

He says: "I worked in the Smith plant in Wexford and built R4s until production ended in 1984. After that we built cable harnesses, mainly for Renault, and we supplied the R4 rear harness until, I think, 1988.

Anyone familiar with the inside of a modern car factory, or who has seen the Citroen Picasso ads, would have been amused by the primitive conditions we worked in - the original factory building dated back to around 1910 and modernisation was low on the list of priorities. The result was a car which was hand built in a somewhat Victorian atmosphere. We all took a great pride in our work and were actually quite pleased to be building a car which had already attained cult status. The fact that it had the charm and reliability of a drunken hippo never mattered - it was the transport of choice for low income families and was mechanically simple so that it could be mostly owner serviced. No computerised engine management here.

I dimly remember a law which had been passed by some government or other whereby anyone importing cars into Ireland had to build a certain proportion of their cars in Ireland. I think this was done in order to protect the indigenous Irish motor industry, such as it was. Renault paid lip service to this law by building a few cars in Wexford. At peak, we built around 100 cars per week.

The workforce has mostly scattered now, but I still have occasional contact with some of my old workmates - in particular Production Manager Joe Forde who would be a mine of information of all things Renault. I'll have to rattle the old brain cells in order to dig info out of my head - it's been nearly 20 years.

Incidentally, the last R4 we built was red. For the record, we also built several olive green models for the Irish army. It certainly feels good to know the we were safe from the Russians during the 80s with our mighty secret weapon. Among other oddities was a series of left-hand drive GTL models for the Belgian and Italian markets. Import the bits from France, assemble them in Ireland and then ship them off to Brussels - An early example of globalisation at work?