Joannes Stouls from the French village of Darney (Vosges area) has owned this Renault Celtastandard since 1937. He pampers the car, even giving it presents. At the same time, he relies on it for his daily commutes to and from the electricity company. It’s quite a special history.
The fewer owners a car has had, the greater the chance that its history is known. This Renault Celtastandard from 1937 appears to be a prime example of this theory. On July 30, 1987, the then exactly 50-year-old Renault changed ownership for the first time.
Upon its launch, the Celtastandard formed the basis of the Renault program. The small Juvaquatre was still under development and to be able to quickly expand the program with an entry-level model, Renault offered a stripped-down version of the Celtaquatre. This model appeared in the catalogues in spring 1936 as the Celtastandard. At 13,900 instead of 16,900 Francs, it cost 25% less than a Celtaquatre. Renault sold it without any chrome parts and that’s why the car comes without bumpers, while headlamps, door handles and windscreen frame all come in body colour and while the artillery wheels have been exchanged for wire wheels. The aluminium finishers on the sills are missing also. On the other hand, the front wings came with lined reinforcement that we do not know from the Celtaquatre. This Renault also only had one windscreen wiper. The Celtastandard carried the same type code as the Celtaquatre: ADC1.
The brand new owner Joannes Paul Lucien Stouls (December 2, 1892 - December 12, 1986) may have chosen to buy the entry-level Renault of its time, he continuously modified his much-beloved car. He was commercial employee at the regional electricity company and it was his job to visit private individuals as well as companies throughout the year in all weather conditions. He did that just as follows: every day he drove his Renault Celtastandard to the next village where he had his appointments. He always parked the car right in front of the local town hall. To move around the villages and small towns, he also carried a bicycle with him at the same time. The current owner took over that particular bike, together with the Celtastandard. It’s a Terrot bike made in Dijon. But how did he attach the bike to the car, even though the distances were often short? Joannes Stouls gave his car a gift every year, or so his son told the new owner when the car was handed over. The car was fairly rapidly equipped with the chrome bumpers of a Celtaquatre, as a plaque on the front bumper, just above the license plate, shows. The front and rear wheel of the Terrot bicycle fitted in exactly with the two mounting brackets of the rear bumper. In this way Joannes did his work day after day and year after year. For small distances, the bicycle was simply placed on the car’s bumper, but when a village lay a little further away; he secured his pushbike with a string also. Given the condition of the bike, it must have worked well. The fact that Joannes passionately loved his car and provided it with gifts year after year, is also evident from the chrome horn and the beautiful, original fog lamp.
Picture left: Joannes Stouls at an advanced age.
At the time it was also common for owners to provide their vehicles with a nameplate. And above the windscreen of this Celtastandard, just behind the sun visor, we find a square metal plaque with ‘J. Stouls, Darney (Vosges)’ on it. In addition, there is the almost obligatory Saint Christopher, which undoubtedly protected him against calamity during his daily drives.
This Celtastandard is of 1937-vintage, with the production number on the oval plate being 9577. A car from model year 1937 is recognizable by the V-shaped grille and the Celtastandard also evolved to the ADC2 type. With the production data from the Renault archives, this brings us on the production month of June 1937. The current , however, speaks of January 1, 1937, but that can only be attributed to the registration certificate being converted to an automated file.
The current owner Georges Aymonier lives in the spa town of Contrexeville not far from Darney where the Celtastandard was sold when it was new. He was a chairman of the Club Auto Retro Vosgien for a long time, regularly giving car-themed presentations at the Club Med in nearby Vittel. It was on one of those occasions that Georges was approached by a Renault engineer. He admired the pre-war car, but also told Georges that a Celtastandard was originally supplied with wire wheels, while his car used the steel wheels of a normal Celtaquatre. But how do you get hold of such a set of wheels fifty to sixty years later? After asking around, Georges managed to find them at a known garage. The wheels were restored, painted in epoxy and a red paint finish and fitted with new Michelin tyres, which, according to Georges, brought comfort to the level of a Citroën DS.
The car’s original wheels have since been moved to a shelf in the garage. A brief glance at the books, however, shows that although the Celtastandard came with wire wheels when it was new, Renault provided the car with steel wheels from August 1936-onwards. This brings us to conclude that the wheels that Georges Aymonier has stored have to be the ones on which the Renault left the factory in Billancourt in June 1937. In addition, Renault also supplied bumpers and a spare wheel as optional extras for 500 French francs at the same time, so these extras may well have been fitted by Joannes Stouls upon delivery. Unfortunately we cannot be sure about these details though. Two years after his first meeting with the Renault engineer, Georges did meet up with him once again. At the time he was almost embraced since Georges had followed his (incorrect) advice.
Georges also happened to be the speaker at another classic car event in Vittel, with plenty of music, folklore and animation. Upon telling about his Celtastandard one time he mentioned the car’s original interior. Although there are covers over the seats, the original fabric is still underneath these. The same goes for the door panels, while the headlining is also untouched. But after this presentation, an old lady walked up to the car, asking if she could open the door. She touched the fabric on the doors with her wrinkly fingers. It turned out that, as a fifteen-year-old girl she started working at Renault in Billancourt in the interior department. At the time, one employee was responsible to complete one particular car, she explained, adding that miles of this fabric have gone through her hands. She also explained that somewhere on the seats a label was stitched with the initials of the employee in question, so that this person could be approached in the event of complaints. Unfortunately, it appeared that after almost 80 years the label of Georges’ Celtastandard had gone missing. But someone who comes across a label on the furniture of his Renault with the initials ‘LC’ now knows that Claudine Luchard made this particular interior.
After having retired, Joannes Stouls continued to cherish his car. Every Monday he started up his beloved Renault, drove it for a short distance, kept it tidy and ensured that all its fluids were up to standard. Soon, however, his eyes began to deteriorate and eventually he became blind, and could no longer take out the Celtastandard. The car became parked up in the rear of the garage for no less than 18 years until Georges Aymonier found out about the Renault with its unique history in 1987. Joannes’ son eventually sells his late dad’s Renault.
With the arrival of the Juvaquatre, the Renault Celtastandard disappeared from the Renault program by the end of the summer of 1937. This meant that the model has only been produced for just over sixteen months. Technically, the Celtastandard is similar to the standard Celtaquatre.
Today, the internet still provides us with the history of Joannes Paul Lucien Stouls. He was the son of a civil-law notary of Saint-Dié and started his school career with the nuns – and later friars - of Beau Jardin, followed by the Pierre Fourrier school in Lunéville and the college of Saint-Dié. In 1907 he followed internships in Nancy, where he found a job at the power plant some three years later. In 1913 he joined the army for three years, starting at the 20th ‘battalion of hunters on foot’ from Baccarat. At the beginning of WW1, Stouls was sent to the frontlines in the Vosges and took part in the battle of the Marne. He spent the winter of 1914-1915 in the tragic sector of Notre Dame de Lorette where he was injured while repairing telephone lines. He was shot in the elbow there. After recovery in Bordeaux, he started to work on the lathe at the Bourges arsenal, followed by the Renault tanks regiment until the end of the War. From 1918-on various military functions followed. In 1926 he returned to work as a commercial assistant at Compagnie Lorraine d’Electricité in Darney, where he met his wife Cécile. They had five children. Two years before his retirement in 1948 he was given a desk job.
En detail...
Renault Celtastandard ADC2
Engine:
4 stroke, 4 cylinder, displacement 1.463 cc. bore x stroke 70 x 95 mm. Solex carburettor 30 FI. Cooling system capacity 12 litres. Battery 6 volts, 75 Ah. Top speed 100 km/h.
Dimensions:
Bodywork without running boards, total length 4,195 m (including bumpers), width 1,572 m. Wheelbase 2.71 m, track width front and rear: 1.30 m. Width of front bench: 1.19 m. Backseat width at hip height 1,31 meters. Interior height 1,22 meters. Tyres: 130 x 40, fuel tank behind, capacity 45 litres.
Final transmission 7 x 32. Drum brakes all round, diameter 264 mm, width of the brake shoes 38 mm.