The company that would become France's biggest automobile manufacturer was founded by Louis Renault and his brothers Marcel and Fernand in 1898.

From the outset Renault engineering was of the highest quality.

By 1904 Renault was building its own engines: large-capacity fours at first followed by the AX twin that later developed into the AG, famous for its WWI role as the 'Taxi de la Marne'.

Powered by a 1,100cc twin-cylinder engine of 8hp and featuring the 'coal scuttle' bonnet and rear-mounted radiator that would characterise Renaults until the late 1920s, the AX arrived at a time when the motor car was beginning to gain a measure of respectability.

The unreliability of early cars had provided good cause for public scepticism but the advent of the AX ushered in a new era.

Here was an easy-to-drive car of simple design, whose mechanical workings even a technically illiterate layman might begin to understand.

The water-cooled twin with its mechanically operated valves was simple a...