If you can picture it, yours truly on Bettystown beach, behind the wheel of a fire-engine-red Renault 4, registration number EZS 530. It was one of the top-of-the-range models with four circular lights at the front rather than the customary two in the regular models. It had go-faster stripes down the side – well, stripes in any case – and the word “Legend” written on the back, indicating a greater degree of luxury. Some of my friends would fondly refer to the car as the “leg end”. At one point I attached a plastic yellow flower that I had found in a graveyard to the aerial for decoration.
It had the signature gearstick at shoulder level to the left and a handbrake that needed to be pulled up from knee level. The windows slid horizontally forward to open, the radio didn’t have an FM tuner and the wipers did not have an intermittent mode. There were many journeys listening to RTÉ Radio 1 and Atlantic 252. A rear fog light was optional on these cars, and there was even a wire at the back for easy connection. You could hear the little one-litre petrol engine roar when you had your foot to the floor. It wasn’t that powerful or even nippy, and there wasn’t much to separate the passengers from the engine itself. This was a great feature in the winter, when the wafting heat was very welcome. The G-force was something terrible when you travelled around corners at anything over 40miles per hour, and it sort of undulated around the bend on its spongy French springs.
My pride and joy
It was my mother’s car, but it was my pride and joy. It was a sad day when she left it outside Crosson’s Garage in Dundalk and we drove home in an Opel Corsa. Nice car, but not the same. Not a patch.
The Renault 4, Renault’s answer to the Citroën 2CV, was used by the P&T and then An Post to deliver post all around Ireland for years. They would sometimes sell off their stock of Renault 4s when they were replaced. One local farmer near us bought two of them for lugging bales of hay and sheep. My aunt had two Renault 4s, a mustard-yellow one and a red one. You’d do well to spot one anywhere in Ireland since the model was discontinued in 1992. They also had the propensity to rust away.
We drove up and down the beach and turned back again. And over and over again, until I had the hang of it. Gently into first and then second and eventually up to fourth gear before I had to slow it down again. There was no fifth gear on a Renault 4. It was some time in 1991, and I was learning to drive ahead of my 17th birthday in January. The truth is I already pretty much knew how to drive from manoeuvres around the garden, but getting to drive it properly was a real treat. I looked forward to the day I would get my provisional licence and then my full licence, and with it a sense of freedom.
Disconnected country boy
Friends in Dublin, I would later discover, were a whole lot more connected to the world outside than a teenager living in semi-rural Ireland. For those of us who grew up outside the capital or another city, a lift from a parent or the Bus Éireann service at the end of the road that passed a number of times a day were the only ways of getting to the nearest big town, in my case Drogheda. So learning to drive, as well as being a rite of passage into adulthood, was a key moment for a teenager’s independence.
But it also meant we developed strong relationships with our cars, and this continues into adulthood for some of us. I remember them all. Each one is associated with a time in my life. The first car I owned myself was a black Mitsubishi Colt. The front indicator light would become dislodged and was held on with Blu-Tack. However, it seemed fast and looked good too. It had electric windows and central locking (I still remember the joy and wonder of seeing both these luxuries when my dad rocked up in 1980-something with his Renault 20 company car).
The day I dislocated my back putting a car seat and child into the Mitsubishi was the day I decided to get rid of it and opt for something with back doors. It came in the form of a Peugeot 406, turbo diesel (more diesel than turbo). Nice and comfortable and the first in a line of family vehicles I would own.
I went on to acquire three different BMWs, one of them about 20 years old; a seven-seater 4x4 (that was later stolen and never seen again); and a Volkswagen Passat (practical and reliable). None is more fondly remembered than the “leg end”. Long live the Renault 4.
@paddylogue
- Michael Harding is on leave