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  • Old Cars Weekly

    Encore: Renault’s Second Act

    Feb 14, 2022 5 minutes
    WITH PATRICK R. FOSTER

    American Motors dealers were waiting for a miracle to lift passenger car sales in the early 1980s. At that time, the new-car market was being decimated by a combination of a depressed economy, fierce competition from Japanese imports, high unemployment and the worst inflation in decades. AMC management delivered that miracle in the form of the 1983 Renault Alliance subcompact, a car so far ahead of its rivals in technology, fuel economy and features that it couldn’t help but sell. And for an encore, it promised to introduce another new line of small cars as a follow up. Those cars arrived the following year in the aptly named Renault Encore, a line of subcompact hatchbacks based on the Alliance platform.

    This was mostly a good move. Small hatchbacks were very popular in the early 1980s, accounting for two-thirds of

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