This is the single greatest honor in the motor vehicle industry, intended to honor a career and/or lifetime achievement. To become a "Hall of Famer" the nominee must be either retired or deceased. Recipients must have significantly impacted the development of the automobile or the motor vehicle industry. Typically, four to eight individuals are inducted each year.
Louis Renault, and the company bearing his family name, are both defined by his inventiveness and drive – and by two world wars.
Louis Renault was born into a wealthy Parisian family, the last of five children. At an early age, he developed an enthusiasm for all things mechanical and electrical. At the age of 20 he invented “direct drive,” considered the auto industry’s first gearbox. Renault’s invention was adopted by virtually every automaker of the day and was the basis of his initial fortune.
In 1899, Louis Renault’s two older brothers, Marcel and Fernand, founded the Renault Brothers company to build automobiles. They did not include their younger brother, Louis, but rather hired him as an employee. Louis, however, was allowed to keep the ownership of his patented transmission.
Through racing, Renault built its early reputation, with Louis Renault taking an increasingly larger role in the success of the company. Brothers Marcel and Fernand, it seemed, were still dubious of the future of automobiles.
It was also racing that claimed the life of brother Marcel in 1903 at the age of 31. Six years later, brother Fernand died after a long illness. At 32, Louis was now alone at the helm and still brimming with new ideas. His cars were growing increasingly powerful and he began to make vans, buses, generators, airplanes – anything that contained an engine.
Renault factories switched from building cars to helping the war effort during World War I. In the four years from 1914 to 1918, the company produced impressive quantities of all kinds of equipment – tanks, trucks, ambulances, munitions – and was the leading producer of airplane engines for use by the Allies.
Louis Renault was honored for his contributions to the war effort and acquired an international reputation. At the end of the war, Renault was France’s largest privately held company.
In 1919, Louis Renault assessed the gap between European and American manufacturers. Mainly due to Ford, which was already mass-producing affordable vehicles, car making had become a major industry. In France, however, the motorcar was still considered a luxury and was heavily taxed, holding back its progress.
Renault reorganized his company into a large company that would be strong and independent and manufactured virtually everything that had an engine: cars, commercial vehicles, buses, tractors, and ship and airplane engines. And following Ford’s example – the Renault empire was vertically integrated, making virtually all its own materials and parts. To supply the workshops, Renault acquired his own foundries, sandpits, forests, saw mills – anything that would reduce his dependency on other companies. Renault even bought his own railroad to ship cars and materials. By 1929, Renault’s factories were producing at a record pace.
The 1920s and ‘30s saw Renault produce some of the world’s great automobiles, on the track as well as the boulevard.
By the early 1930s, with the company successful, Louis Renault was at the summit of his glory, completing a lifetime of work. But he was no longer in tune with the times and he did not understand the shape history was taking.
In 1940, Renault succumbed to the German Occupation and began to build trucks and tanks for the German army. The huge Renault factory was destroyed during the war, and, when France was liberated in 1944, Louis Renault was imprisoned for trading with the enemy. He died a month later in a Paris clinic.
Following the war, the French government nationalized Renault and began its rebirth as one of the world’s preeminent automakers. Renault had gone from a one-man business to a national company.
