Louis Renault invented the direct-drive transmission and became the Henry Ford of France — hard-charging, obsessive, and vastly rich. Then de Gaulle confiscated everything. Now his heirs, armed with ...

Louis Renault needs no introduction. The eponymous founder of one of the world's most exciting car companies was a visionary, a racing enthusiast, and a relentless innovator. But did you know that ...

Louis Renault built his first car in his parents' garden in 1898. He was 21. On New Year's Eve that year, he drove it up a steep hill in Paris on a bet, and took twelve orders on the spot. That was ...

Few Frenchmen wept when they read in their newspapers one October morning in 1944 that Louis Renault had died in a Paris nursing home. He had been rich, powerful and famous, cantankerous, brilliant, ...

Some people are just born curious. One minute, Louis Renault was tying a system of ropes from his bed post, allowing a set of zinc plates to dip into an acid bath that turned them into batteries. One ...

Of all the brilliant people who acquired patents for inventions and built empires, he was one of the most successful, but one of the most tragic. What a curious boy he was. One minute Louis Renault ...

The story of Louis Renault, the founder of the French car company that still bears his name, is a movie waiting to be made. A young genius pioneers motorcar design and single-mindedly forges a ...