Black Renault Juvaquatre Berline Type BFK4 from 1946, four cylinders, 1003 cc, 24 HP, 107 km/h.
The Renault Juvaquatre is a small family car / compact car automobile produced by the French manufacturer Renault between 1937 and 1960, although production stopped or slowed to a trickle during the war years. The Juvaquatre was produced as a sedan/saloon until 1948 when the plant switched its full attention to the new Renault 4CV. During the second half of 1952 the plant restarted production of the Juvaquatre sedans/saloons for a period of approximately five months.
Power was transmitted from the front-mounted engine to the rear wheels via a traditional three-speed manual gear box, with synchromesh on the upper two ratios.
The Juvaquatre featured independent suspension at the front.
Renault were the last of the “big 3” French automakers, in 1937, to offer independent front suspension on a passenger car: Peugeot had claimed a world first for independent front suspension in the volume car sector, with a 1931 upgrade for the Peugeot 201, and Citroen had made a start back in 1934.
The front suspension assemblies on the Juvaquatre were intended to minimize the risk of wear on the components leading to misalignment of the wheels, featuring just three joints on each assembly and the transversely mounted leaf spring constituting the fourth flexible element of a simple parallelogramme structure. The rear wheels were attached using the tried and trusted combination of a rigid axle mounted with transverse leaf springs.
The brakes on the Juvaquatre were mechanically controlled on the early cars, but Lockheed Corporation Hydraulic brakes were introduced in 1939.
