To understand the hype, we need a history lesson. In the early 1970s, Renault’s motorsport division needed a weapon for Formula France and the burgeoning European Formula Renault series.
The DF104 was not your standard Cléon-Fonte engine found in a Renault 12. It was a bespoke 1.6-liter (1565cc) inline-four racing engine. Its party trick? A crossflow aluminum cylinder head designed by Gordini, fed by two twin-choke Weber carburetors.
In period, it produced approximately 150 to 170 horsepower—massive numbers for a 1.6L in 1973. It revved past 8,000 rpm like a chainsaw and weighed next to nothing. It powered iconic open-wheelers like the Martini MK16 and Alpine A364. renault df104 new
If your vehicle has an active DF104 fault, you may experience the following:
By: [Auto Historian]
In the pantheon of automotive “what-ifs,” few vehicles are as simultaneously obscure and prophetic as the Renault DF104. To the casual enthusiast, the name means nothing. To the electric vehicle historian, it is a Rosetta Stone. But when you append the word “New” to it—the Renault DF104 New—you unlock a strange, layered story of oil shocks, French industrial stubbornness, and a vehicle that was technically brilliant but commercially stillborn.
This is the story of the car that should have launched the EV revolution two decades before the Nissan Leaf and 30 years before the Tesla Roadster. To understand the hype, we need a history lesson
In 1975, L’Auto-Journal tested the DF104 New. Their verdict was a mosaic of contradictions.
Launched quietly in 1975, the "New" DF104 was not a facelift; it was a fundamental re-engineering. Renault had learned the hard way that you cannot simply drop a motor into an R4 chassis and call it a day. It was a bespoke 1