The Douai Renault factory is a car plant belonging to the Renault Group, opened in 1970 at

Douai Douai ( , , ; ; ; formerly spelled Douay or Doway in English) is a city in the Nord (French department), Nord département in northern France. It is a Subprefectures in France, sub-prefecture of the department. Located on the river Scarpe (rive ...

in the industrial basin of the Nord department, not far from Lille (Rijsel).

History

Construction of the plant received a go-ahead in 1968, with a formal announcement of the project coming a year later. Douai was chosen because it was well located at the heart of the industrial centre of gravity of the

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with excellent road links to major industry and population centres. It was also in an area with a large pool of available workers, due to the running down of

coal mining Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

in the area. The first car put into serial production at the plant was the Renault 5, initially in small batches, starting early in 1975. The principal production location for the little car was, and remained, at Flins, however. Towards the end of 1975 production started at Douai, in much larger batches, of the Renault 14, building up stock ahead of the launch of Renault's first head-on

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...

competitor in 1976. Volumes in 1976 were 325 Renault 14 and 50 R5's per diem. The plant has continued to specialise in the manufacture of cars in the

small family car The C-segment is the 3rd category of the European segments for passenger cars and is described as "medium cars". It is equivalent to the Euro NCAP "small family car" size class, and the compact car category in the United States. In 2024, the C-s ...

segment. By 1977 the plant was employing 7,000 people. This was a period of rapid automation in car production, and as a new plant Douai was more highly automated than most. It was perhaps a reflection of the fact that all the jobs at the plant were then new jobs, that the robots were viewed with some affection by some members of the workforce. At the end of the body assembly shop much of the main welding together of the pressed panels was undertaken by a team of four "Unimate" robots christened, by their human colleagues, Theophile, Arsine, Marcel and Modeste. Visitors at this time were also impressed by the ample space in the plant available for further expansion. However, in 2008 Douai suffered a blow when production of mainstream

Renault Mégane The Renault Mégane (), also spelled without the acute accent as Megane, especially in languages other than French, and also known as the Renault Megavan for an LCV in Ireland, as the Renault Scala in Iran and as the Renault Mégane Grandcoup� ...

model was concentrated on the

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plant: hitherto the two plants had assembled the model in parallel, but sales volumes no longer justified that arrangement. Douai retained the sporty low volume Mégane CC Coupé and Cabriolet.

Production

Historical production

The following Renault models have been manufactured at Douai: * Renault 5 (1972–1985) * Renault 14 (1976–1983) * Renault 9/

Renault 11 Eleven or 11 may refer to: *11 (number) * One of the years 11 BC, AD 11, 1911, 2011 Literature *Eleven (novel), ''Eleven'' (novel), a 2006 novel by British author David Llewellyn *''Eleven'', a 1970 collection of short stories by Patricia Highsmi ...

(1981–1989) *

Renault 19 The Renault 19 is a small family car that was produced by the French car manufacturer Renault between 1988 and 1996. In Turkey and in Argentina, production continued until 2000. The internal development code for the 19 was X53, with the five d ...

(1988–1996) * Renault Mégane I (1996–2002) * Renault Scénic I (4X2 and RX4) (1996–2003) * Renault Mégane II (saloon and coupé) (2003–2009) * Renault Scénic II (2003–2009) * Renault Grand Scénic II (2003–2009) * Renault Scénic III (2009–2015) * Renault Grand Scénic III (2009–2015) * Renault Talisman (2015–2022) * Renault Scénic IV (2016–2022) * Renault Espace V (2015–2023)

Current production

* Renault Megane E-Tech Electric (2022–present) *

Renault 5 E-Tech The Renault 5 E-Tech is a B-segment battery electric car produced by the French manufacturer Renault since 2024. Inspired by the original Renault 5 in styling, the 5 E-Tech was previewed by a concept car shown in January 2021, with the producti ...

(2024–present) *

Renault Scenic E-Tech The Renault Scenic E-Tech is a Battery electric vehicle, battery electric compact crossover SUV that is produced by French automaker Renault from 2024. It was previewed as a concept was shown in May 2022 called the Renault Scénic Vision, with t ...

(2024–present)

References

{{Coord, 50, 21, 50, N, 3, 1, 40, E, region:FR_type:landmark, display=title Buildings and structures in Pas-de-Calais 1970 establishments in France Renault Motor vehicle assembly plants in France