Renault Alliance Limited
At Franco-American Motors, prodigy is the most important product.
Cupid, after years of archery practice on boys and girls, has turned his quiver to bigger game, and now automobile firms are getting hitched all over the world. British Leyland is building Hondas in England, Alfa is tooling up a Nissan in Italy, Nissan plans to assemble VWs in Japan, and the GM-Isuzu-Suzuki and Ford-Toyo Kogyo families are both pregnant with future projects. The AMC-Renault marriage was a natural as these relationships go: each firm had something the other desperately needed. Renault had the resources and the desire to build its U.S. operations back to their former glory, while AMC had an enviable record of keeping a stiff upper lip through thin and thinner, but no future. American Motors did enjoy a well-established network of dealers, but unfortunately had nothing modern for them to sell. Renault, to the contrary, possessed leading-edge small-car technology but no way to market it here in profitable volumes. Introductions were made, a courteous courtship followed, and the necessary vows were exchanged. Renault has acquired 46.4 percent of AMC over the past few years with an investment commitment of $350 million ($220 million of which has been spent to date). AMC dealers, in turn, have been selling Le Cars, 18is, and recently Fuegos, while Renault dealers have	been offered AMC and Jeep franchises. The give-and-take phase set the stage for the Alliance, an American-made edition of the Renault 9 (C/D, January). After a $150 million overhaul of American Motors' assembly facility in Kenosha, Wisconsin, a switch was ceremoniously flipped in June and the first offspring of the AMC-Renault union started rolling off the line. The Alliance wears both AMC and Renault badges across its deck lid, but the former is really little more than a courtesy to the American parent: what they're building in Kenosha is a European automobile. The options list is long, the interior is color-keyed, and you can have whitewall tires as you like, but under the paint, the character is all continental. And we don't mean Lincoln. AMC was wise not to tamper with the excellent design it got with the merger. Soon after its introduction a year ago, the Renault 9 became the best-selling car in Renault's history and far and	away the most popular model in France. European journalists bestowed upon it their 1982 Car of the Year award. AMC, whose past expertise lies in rear- and four-wheel-drive machinery, may have stumbled headlong into the modern front-drive era, but it has definitely landed on its feet. AMC's responsibilities with the Alliance were quite well defined: add a two-door body style, re-tool the country's largest assembly operation (Kenosha) to build a French-designed car instead of Spirits and Concords, and dress the AMC/Renault sibling with a wide range of trim levels and options to cut the widest possible swath through the bountiful small-sedan field. Size has everything to do with the R9's success at home and its potential here. While it's slightly smaller than a Ford Escort on the outside and a bit bigger on the inside, the new Renault alooks larger and more inviting. The classic three-box sedan layout certainly adds visual substance, as do the urethane-clad bumpers. In addition, the Alliance benefits from a wheelbase unusually long for its overall length. With almost three inches more wheelbase than an Escort, rear seating in the Alliance is (a tight) three abreast; more common is the two-abreast seating of the Honda Civic, Escort/Lynx, Mazda GLC, and VW Rabbit. Room for the family isn't enough by

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