Renault

A steep hill in Paris and a homemade car that climbed it. That is where Renault starts. In 1898, Louis Renault was not thinking about building a car company. He was thinking about gearboxes. Louis was the youngest of three brothers. He loved machines the way some people love music or painting. He had a tiny workshop behind the family home in Paris, and he spent hours there taking things apart and putting them back together. He built a small car. Nothing fancy. But he put a gearbox in it that worked differently from most. Direct drive. No chains. It made the car simple and efficient. Then one night during Christmas 1898, Louis drove that little car up the Rue Lepic in Montmartre. The Rue Lepic is steep. Steep enough that most early cars wheezed and died trying to climb it. Louis's car went up l... More