Artcurial has announced the Renault Icons sale for this December – a collection of 100 cars on offer directly from the French manufacturer at an auction held at the Flins-sur-Seine factory 40km from Paris.
Renault recently announced its new heritage strategy, with a fresh exhibition space to be built at Flins on the site of the former production plant that built millions of Renaults from 1952 onwards, including the Dauphine, R5, Clio and ZOE. Around 600 models will be preserved – at least one example of every vehicle produced since 1898. The new museum is due to be open to the public in 2027, and more details can be found here.
As part of this process, Renault is reducing the size of its collection by pruning the fleet of every car currently duplicated in its line-up. The Artcurial Renault Icons 2025 sale will showcase 100 models that the auction house says have defined the story of the marque. These will include prototypes, road models and racing machines. For example, the above 1978 Renault-Alpine A442 was driven by Derek Bell and Jean-Pierre Jarier at the Le Mans 24 Hours. While its sister car piloted by Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud won the event, the Bell/Jarier A442’s bid came to an end at 2:30am while running in third, when it was stranded at Tertre Rouge with a broken transmission.
Included in the Artcurial Renault Icons 2025 sale are 20 Formula 1 cars that have competed in the World Championship. Alongside them will be 100 items of automobilia such as F1 engines, design studies and wind-tunnel models. Artcurial says every lot in the Renault Icons sale comes directly from Renault’s heritage collection and is entirely new to the market.
Although details are scarce on the precise chassis up for sale, there’s a 1983 RE40 – the first Renault chassis to be entirely built from carbonfibre. Alain Prost led the Championship for much of the season, notching up four wins and three podiums, but reliability issues stymied his and team-mate Eddie Cheever’s Championship ambitions; it would be the last year Renault would trouble the top spot in F1 during the 1980s. At the end of the season both drivers would depart – Prost to McLaren and Cheever to Alfa Romeo.
There’s also a 1984 Lotus 95T, powered by the Renault Gordini EF4 V6 and driven by Elio de Angelis, team-mate to Nigel Mansell, plus a 1982 Renault RE30 driven by René Arnoux in a season of two wins, two podiums and ten retirements.
The Artcurial Renault Icons 2025 sale also contains fascinating design studies and what-might-have-beens in maquette form. While most of these styling proposals have some semblance of production concepts, there’s a fascinating UFO-looking design that’s got the collective Magneto mind wondering. There are also models for train carriages and container ships – and this is just from an early preview.
More details will be revealed ahead of the December 7 Artcurial Renault Icons 2025 sale. Additional information is available here.
