From a lot to very little
The Renault 16 was one of Renault’s greatest successes in the last century. Nowadays, however, you can rub your hands if you spot one. It happened to AutoWeek forum member Louisz, who quickly grabbed his camera.
Renault produced the 16 for no less than 15 years, with the result that more than 1.8 million copies have been put on the road. So you can speak of a great success. It was also in the Netherlands. Yet today there are only a few dozen R16s left in our country. The R16 has not become such a popular classic as the R4, for example, although it probably deserved it.
After all, it was quite an innovative model. The R16 was a hatchback and that was extremely unusual in 1965. In fact, the R16 can be seen as the first successful hatchback ever. In addition, the R16 was praised for its comfort and handling. The latter was mainly due to the engine placed relatively far back, which was behind the gearbox. A layout that could make tinkering with the R16 complicated, but it benefited the road holding.
Were there more things about the R16 in which Renault had acted in a nice way? Yes, the distance between the front and rear wheel differs per side. For example, the wheelbase on the left is no less than 7 cm longer than on the right. The R16 was not alone in this at Renault. For example, the R4 also had an uneven wheelbase, only the difference between the two sides was smaller than with the R16.
Although Renault was very successful with the R16 thanks to all this, it unfortunately turned out to be not quite made for eternity. Which means; they could rust like many other cars from that time. So there were a lot of R16s on the road, but they also disappeared relatively quickly. Spotting Renaults 16 has therefore been quite special for quite some time and we almost never see them in the topic on our forum. That changed today, when Louisz shared the car, with additional photos on his Flickr account.
We have an R16 in front of us here that saw Abraham last June. For a car that is already 50 years old, it still looks good, while the R16 came to our sometimes quite humid country in 1986. Someone has been careful with this. For a long time too, because from 1986 to 2020 the R16 lived with the owner who imported it. Now it is with its second Dutch owner, who will hopefully cherish it just as much.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl