This may seem a strange choice for Auto-Exotica; the Renault Dauphine was hardly a collector’s classic or a ground-breaking innovation that changed the face of motoring forever. But it has something that no other car can lay claim to: it was the car I learned to drive in!

It was my mother’s car (my father’s at the time was a Rover 90 – a classic of sorts) and I am glad, looking back, that it was the accidental choice for my formative driving days. What made it special as a first car was that it was rear-engined. There can be no better introduction to driving than a rear-engined car, especially if you are in your teens and fancy yourself as God’s gift to the driving world.

Because rear-engined cars are fundamentally safe; they will spin like a top if you overdo a corner but, unless you’re driving a Volkswagen Beetle, there is no way you’ll ever turn one over. Beetles flip because they have swing arm rear suspension – as the car leans away from the corner, the swing arm forces the wheel under the car until eventually it can go no further and, at that point, the car turns over.

Not so the Dauphine. I learned to “hang the tail out” around corners, holding the car balanced at the exact point between spinning and turning, and occasionally I would lose it and do a fancy pirouette down the road – but never was it anywhere near flipping. As a tutor for opposite lock, it was better than a skidpan.

This particular Dauphine was unusual in one respect; it had a big letter “G” on the rocker cover. Now, knowing that the Renault tune-up specialists in France were named Gordini, I became convinced that somehow one of their engines had found its way into my mothers car. Because it was fast, much faster than it should have been and quicker than its natural competition, the Ford Anglias that abounded.

The Dauphine should have been pretty quick anyway – it was nothing but a tinny body with plastic trimmings inside and the sound of its slamming doors would echo in the empty space of its innards. So it was light and did not need a brute of an engine to get it up to speed. The extra power, real or imagined, donated by that “G” on the engine gave my mother’s car a performance that made it a joy to drive, especially as it handled so well (if you enjoyed oversteer – and what red-blooded boy racer doesn’t?).

Of course, there were all the usual foibles of French design of the time – the whippy gear lever and blatantly plastic steering wheel – but I forgave it all because it was such fun to drive. Years later, when I encountered driving on ice and snow for the first time (it does not snow in Zimbabwe), the lessons that old Dauphine taught me came in very handy.

So I don’t care that the Dauphine probably doesn’t belong amongst the illustrious company of these pages. It was my first love, after all.