Renault Reinastella
When Disneyland Paris opened in April 1992, one of the new attractions located within it was called The Visionarium, or Un Voyage à Travers le Temps, in which guests were taken on a journey through time, ‘meeting’ the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Disney had struck a sponsorship deal with Renault to appear throughout. There’s a cameo appearance from a Renault Clio, one of the brand’s Formula One cars and a bizarre flying car from the future, named the Reinastella. This concept car actually existed… sort of. Renault built two show models of the Reinastella, to be put on display near the Visionarium’s entrance. It would remain there until 2002, when the sponsorship deal between Renault and Disney ended.
In order to create the Reinastella, Renault designers envisioned what personal transportation would look like in the year 2328. Logically, what they came up with was something completely out of this world. In fact, the only thing about it that wasn’t completely futuristic was its name, as it came from a car Renault built between 1929 and 1933. The original Reinastella was a sight to behold and the biggest car ever produced by that company by that point. This came when Renault was still a luxury brand - something of a French Rolls-Royce.
For its newest creation, Renault designers went all-out to create a vision of the future, complete with convincingly crazy sounding backstory. The peculiar, flying saucer-shaped body was covered with an innovative synthetic material, dermotylene, while the engine was powered by a bio-organic engine fueled by a fluid called ‘PlasmElf’. It would hover at around 15 centimeters above the ground in the city, where it would move around with a speed of 50 kilometers per hour. Get it to 150 meters, however, and Renault said it would be able to reach 300 kmh. There was no need for a steering wheel and pedals, as the Reinastella was capable of carrying five people in perfect silence controlled by voice commands and artificial intelligence. Lucky passengers could even enjoy the views through a porthole in the front.
Ahead of its inclusion in the Visionarium, Renault unveiled the Reinastella on April 2nd at its own permanent exhibition showroom at the Champs-Elysees in Paris. Legend has it that the French manufacturer purposefully decided to push the unveiling back by a day, as it feared the French public would perceive the Reinastella to be an April Fools joke. It stayed at the attraction until 2002, when the deal between Renault and Disney expired (although it would remain a part of the attraction’s film after that). After that, it became part of the Renault Classic Collection, regularly appeared at car shows across Europe and was put on display at Renault’s Paris showroom. We were able to acquire this Reinastella, one of just two ever built, at Retromobile Paris in February 2023.
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