Across the Sahara and back again, the tale of the six-wheeled Renaults

While researching our recent post on six-wheeled automobiles, LaChance recalled another such automobile – actually, three of them – that would be worth investigating. These, however, differ from the Pullman, the Pratt and the Reeves substantially; where the latter three were conceived to tame the horrible roads of the early Twentieth Century, these three were built to cross a landscape utterly devoid of roads.

In the early to mid-1920s, both Citroën and Renault competed in various crossings of the Sahara desert and Africa, each with different methods. Citroën figured tracked vehicles – actually, half-tracks – would work better, while Renault placed his bet on cars outfitted with 12 low-pressure tires on three axles.

Yves Richard, in his book on Renault, wrote that the six-wheelers were based on the 13.9hp models that Renault had at the time, but other sources, such as oto6.fr (which collected plenty more photos of the cars), write that they were based on the 10CV. Either way, the first three, called the “Routiers du desert,” went to the Gradis-Estienne expedition, which in January 1924 left Colomb-Bechar, at the end of the Algerian railway, for Bourema, at the end of the Niger railway, and made the 1,500-mile crossing in seven days, then turned around and headed back for Algiers.

Richard suggests that this was the first successful crossing of the Sahara by automobile, but it was actually Georges Marie Haardt and Louis Audouin-Dubreuil who accomplished that feat in December 1922-January 1923 in their tracked Citroëns.

More expeditions in Renault six-wheelers followed. Commandant Delingette and his wife made the first end-to-end crossing of Africa – between Colomb-Bechar and Capetown, between November 1925 and July 1926, in one of the Routiers. Richard wrote:

They became bogged down a hundred times over and on innumerable occasions had to dry out their magneto over a camp fire. The light bridges made from straw and clay gave way under the weight of their vehicle… The car had climbed mountains up mule tracks which crumbled away under the wheels and they thought that they would never reach the end of miles of overpowering jungle where enormous trees formed a maze of columns and created an eternal twilight at their feet.

Louis Renault established the Compagnie Generale Transsaharienne shortly after to establish regular service – via six-wheeled 20hp buses – between North Africa and Niger, and the 1927 LeBlanc expedition between Cairo and Addis-Ababa seemed to use the Routiers du desert Renaults. In fact, Richard notes the use of the six-wheelers in Africa as late as 1932.