BUSINESS ABROAD: Renault on the Go

The car that has come up fastest in the U.S. market in the past year is Renault's Dauphine (Crown Princess). A snub-nosed 32-h.p. sedan, it is low-priced ($1,645 in Manhattan), economical (up to 43 miles per gallon), and small enough (155 inches long) to shoehorn into a small parking space. Totting up 1957 results last week, Renault announced that it sold some 24,000 Dauphines in the U.S.—v. only 500 during 1956—plus another 4,000 smaller Renaults. For 1958, Renault has boosted its U.S. export quota to 60,000 cars, hopes to move within striking distance of Germany's front-running Volkswagen, which sold 72,000 autos and small trucks in the U.S. during 1957.

The Dauphine is already outselling Volkswagen in eleven U.S. states, including Texas. So brisk is demand that Renault and the French Line have formed a new shipping company with six freighters that ferry up to 1,060 Dauphines each across the Atlantic. To woo the U.S. buyer, Renault in just 18 months has also built a nationwide network of 16 U.S. distributors, 410 dealers.

Absolute Monarchy. The remarkable thing is that this type of freewheeling enterprise has come from a government-owned firm. But Renault (assets: $253.5 million) is a far cry from the classic nationalized company. It has never had a government loan, and the government keeps hands off, aside from examining Renault's books once a year and tapping civil servants as its top managers. Says Renault's President-Director General Pierre Dreyfus, 50, a scholarly doctor of law, lifelong civil servant and ten-year Renault veteran: "We operate like an absolute monarchy. I make all the decisions. We have one stockholder—the French state. The state merely judges the financial results at the end of the year. If the results are bad, the state can fire me."

Ever since the state has been in the driver's seat, results have been good, although Renault had to live down some unhappy history. The company was born in 1898 when brilliant Louis Renault started putting together racing cars in his mother's backyard. When his early models won races, Renault won fame and sales. He rolled out one of the world's first taxicabs in 1906, became a top French military producer in World War I, by 1920 was Europe's biggest automaker.

Austere and autocratic, Louis Renault ruled his company like a barony, sacked anyone who even whispered about a labor union. In the 1930s the company boiled with Communist unrest. During the World War II occupation, the company rolled out 34,232 tanks, trucks and other vehicles for the Germans; workers who protested working conditions were shot on the spot by the Nazis. After the Liberation, ailing Louis Renault, 67, was accused by the government of collaborating with the Nazis; four weeks later he died in a private clinic. The French government confiscated his 95% interest in the company and seized the remaining 5% held by private investors (it later paid them for it).