Gerry Van Tonder profiles Renault’s ‘Goélette’ 4x4 military ambulance
With the fall of Berlin in 1945, much of Europe, although relieved to be free of Nazi tyranny, faced imminent financial bankruptcy. Like many of her neighbours, France had slumped into economic stagnation. However, in the post-war years, France experienced two significant developments which made a lasting impact on the nation.
Globally, there was a marked nationalist groundswell in the colonies of European empires, as they clamoured for full self-government. In the decades after 1945, France would lose most of her colonies, sometimes in an extremely bloody transition. There were popular insurrections in the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, and brutal, full-blown conflicts in French Indochina (1946-54) and later in Algeria (1956-62).
Second, was the reconstruction of France’s motor industry. With the fall of France to Hitler’s Wehrmacht in 1940, most of the production up until 1944 were vehicles ordered by the Nazi regime. While the production of private motor cars collapsed during Nazi occupation, by 1942 there had been a 50% increase in trucks coming off the assembly line.
In 1899, a French motor vehicle manufacturing company had…
