Flins Renault Factory (also known internally as the Pierre Lefaucheux Factory in memory of Renault's first CEO following nationalisation

Pierre Lefaucheux

Pierre Lefaucheux was a leading French industrialist and a Compagnon de la Libération. -Early years:Born at Triel-sur-Seine, and descended from the French inventor Casimir Lefaucheux, Pierre was second of the four children of Pierre André Lefaucheux and Madeleine Dulac.He volunteered for military...

) is a car factory in France, straddling the towns of Flins

Flins-sur-Seine

Flins-sur-Seine is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France.-References:*...

 and Aubergenville

Aubergenville

Aubergenville is a commune in the Yvelines department in north-central France. It is located between Mantes-la-Jolie and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in the valley of the Seine...

 in Yvelines

Yvelines

Yvelines is a French department in the region of Île-de-France.-History:Yvelines was created from the western part of the defunct department of Seine-et-Oise on 1 January 1968 in accordance with a law passed on 10 January 1964 and a décret d'application from 26 February 1965.It gained the...

, around 40 km downstream of Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. It is the largest (and, since the closure of the Boulogne-Billancourt

Boulogne-Billancourt

Boulogne-Billancourt is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Boulogne-Billancourt is a sub-prefecture of the Hauts-de-Seine department and the seat of the Arrondissement of Boulogne-Billancourt....

 factory, the oldest) Renault Group

Renault

Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

 factory in mainland France. It was designed by the architect Bernard Zehrfuss

Bernard Zehrfuss

Bernard Louis Zehrfuss was a French architect.-Life:From a family that had fled from the Alsace in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War, Zehrfuss's father was killed in the First Battle of the Marne in 1914...

 and opened in 1952. It is 237 hectares in extent, of which 67 are occupied by covered buildings.

Between 1952 and the summer break of July 2009 the plant had assembled 16,850,000 vehicles.

Having in the past produced historic models such as the Dauphine

Renault Dauphine

Renault Dauphine is a rear-engined economy car manufactured by Renault in one body style — a three-box, four-door sedan — as the successor to the Renault 4CV, with over two million examples marketed worldwide during its production from 1956-1967....

, its single production line and 3,500 workers currently specialise in the production of the Clio. In 2009 125,400 Clio's emerged from the Flins production line, although this was a lesser quantity than the 179,495 produced at Renault's Bursa plant that year.

The Flins plant also produces numerous metal and plastic moulded components for use in Renault and Nissan factories round the world which appears to give it a more secure future than some of the manufacturer's more recently constructed plants in France. In November 2009 it was confirmed that Flins would build the company's first electric powered volume model, based on the "Zoé"

Renault Zoé

Renault Zoe is a name used for a number of different concept cars created by Renault. The electric Zoe Z.E. concept was shown in two different versions in 2009 and 2010 under the Renault Z.E...

 concept car. Considerable capacity is also being created for the manufacture and assembly of batteries in connection with this project.

Sources and further reading

• The entry incorporates text translated from the corresponding French Wikipedia entry as at 2010-03-27.