Photo: A sketch of the design of the Renault 4 Rodéo by Robert Broyer.

Photo: SEAB's proposal for a resin car on an R4 base. The details of the Mehari are easily recognisable.

Roland de la Poype director and Darpin engineer from SEAB (Societé d'Etude et d'Application de Brevet) visited Bernard Hanon of Renault around 1966. They built a plastic car on a chassis of the Renault 4. Hanon, however, didn't see any commercial possibilities at Renault and rejected the proposal. SEAB put the same bodywork on the chassis of a Citroën 2CV shortly after, and the Méhari was born.

The great success immediately after its launch in May 1968 made Hanon realise that he had made the wrong decision. So he did want a plastic Jeep-like car based on the Renault 4. He asked Yves Georges, head of the design department, to make such a car for him. Due to a busy schedule, Georges had to ignore this assignment.

Instead, five coachbuilders were asked by Hanon to come up with a proposal for both design and production. It was then already clear that Renault would not build this car itself. The Belgian company Apal and the French SEAB, A.C.L. (Atelier de Construction du Livradois) and Chappe & Gessalin, among others, were asked to come up with a proposal. Renault's management resolutely rejected what these companies provided. Each and every one of them did not live up to expectations.

With some pressure from above, Yves Georges accepted that his own department would pick up the project. A team of twelve people started to work on it including Louis Lepoix of Form Technic International (FTI) and Renault's own Robert Broyer. In October 1969, he drew the basis. Robert's proposal was chosen and worked out into a 1:1 scale model. It was presented on 12 May 1970. Because of the experience with the Méhari, the production took place at SEAB.The project was fully approved and could be developed into a production model.

Then one morning on radio station Europe 1, Robert Broyer learned that Raoul Teilhol of A.C.L. in Courpière would start the production of the Renault 4 Rodéo, as that will be its name. It was also made known that the original design that his company had previously presented to Renault was chosen. The management of Renault was furious while Teilhol was defending itself with the fact that a journalist had reported it. Renault immediately started legal proceedings to deal with Teilhol.

Then the telephone rang at Pierre Dreyfus, the President of Renault. Giscard d'Estaing was on the line, at the time still Minister of Finance. The French State was a major shareholder in Renault and, if necessary, had a proper say. The Minister more or less imposed on Renault that the 4 Rodéo should not only be produced at Teilhol, but that this company’s design should also be taken into production unchanged. And so the refreshing design from Robert disappeared.

Robert Broyer: "It was clearly visible in the design of Teilhol's Renault 4 Rodéo that the company had no experience whatsoever in building plastic bodies. The proposal was modelled on steel. If you want to use long straight surfaces in plastic, you have to give those surfaces some bulging, otherwise it will collapse.”

Teilhol turned out to be an excellent and reliable company as a contract partner. The programme had to be expanded with a Renault 6 Rodéo fitted with the 1.1 litre engine from the R6 TL. Robert: "I reported to Courpière on Monday morning with modelling clay and the necessary tools. Two bodies of a 4 Rodéo had been prepared on stands.

That was my basic material to work with. The expectations were high because I would design a new car for A.C.L. due to a lack of its own designers. The two bodies stood on a floor of sand. I had enough clay with me to model half a front, that's all. We immediately decided to leave the car identical from the windscreen to the back and only tackle the nose. I modelled the specific front of the 6 Rodéo. On Friday afternoon I could go home again, job done!”

Due to his fast working method and the great satisfaction with his talent, Robert Broyer was later called in by Raoul Teilhol to design the 5 Rodéo. Renault hardly interfered with this. Other Teilhol products such as mopeds also flowed from Robert's pen. A project that should have lead to the 9 Rodéo was stopped by Renault in 1985.