I've owned real 1:1 size hatchbacks for many years, because they're the perfect choice for our little two-person family of my wife and I, living here in Sydney's inner-city suburbs. Hatches are compact enough to squeeze into small parking spaces, they can be re-configured to carry home plants and hardware when I need to, and they can handle the highways for touring holidays with just the two of us to haul from A to B. Oh, and they're economical, fun to drive and I've always liked the way they look, come to think of it. Right now I'm driving a Citroen C4 1.6 litre turbo-diesel and it's probably the best car I have owned, but my other hatchbacks, including reliable but boring Mazdas, have also served me well.
In my diecast cabinet, however, there are precious few hatchback cars. Just not sexy enough, I guess. But the two hatches I do have are often cited as being either the 'first' hatchback, or the 'first successful' hatchback, or some other term suggesting an important little milestone in mass four-wheeled transport. Let me start with my idea of the 'first successful' hatchback, and we'll work back from there.
The trouble is that the historians say there were several earlier claimants to the 'first hatchback' title. The Citroen Traction Avant Commerciale of 1938 had a big hatch-style rear opening, hinged at the top. But it was a commercial vehicle, and hardly launched a trend. Add to that other claimants with hinged rear doors, such as the Aston Martin DB2/4, the Austin A40 Countryman of 1958, a Holden variant back in 1948, a De Soto from the US, and the Autobianchi Priumula of 1964 (plus some others) and suddenly the Renault 16 looks like it's well down the queue, but to my mind it's still the first successful hatch, because the complete package is what sold like hotcakes, and which so many other manufacturers copied. And so the Renault 16 can at least claim to be the first car which got the hatchback concept right, so right that everyone else copied it.
Now, there's another car older than the Renault 16 which is often labelled as the 'first hatchback' and I'm comfortable with this choice, as it meets my criterion of being a sales success. It's the Renault 4.
Now, there's another car older than the Renault 16 which is often labelled as the 'first hatchback' and I'm comfortable with this choice, as it meets my criterion of being a sales success. It's the Renault 4.
A C4. I've never noticed the back end of one. It looks like a trunk-less C6, my favorite contemporary sedan.
ReplyDeleteHere is a perfectly preserved Renault 16 I saw. It was meticulously owned by a French farmer before it was sent to California.
http://karakullake.blogspot.com/2010/06/super-french-citroen-renault-car.html
That farmer's Renault 16 is amazing. My boss reckons his old dad, a keeper of immaculate cars, used to spend many an evening on his back in the garage polishing the underside of his car.
ReplyDeleteLike the Peugeots and Citroens of that era, the 16 also had amazingly plush, comfortable seats.
haha, really nice auto :) thank you for psot. amazing mobile!
ReplyDeleteI used the same photo some years ago for my 1/43 Falcon XR GT. You can see it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://blog.saloncolempi.com/2008/11/ford-falcon-xr-gt-de-classic.html
Regards
Nice! Loved the post!
ReplyDelete