Renault has put one of the most evocative names in its back catalog back into the air. Almost 90 years after entering French aviation history, the Renault Caudron Rafale C.460 flew again on 23 and 24 May at the ‘Le Temps des Hélices’ air show at La Ferté-Alais, near Paris.

The flight is more than a stunt of heritage. It comes as Renault continues to use the Rafale name for its current D-segment SUV coupé, the brand’s flagship and a key model in its attempt to move into a more emotional, upmarket territory.

The production Rafale was unveiled at the Paris Air Show on 18 June 2023, deliberately displayed in an aviation setting and alongside the historic aircraft to underline the link between Renault’s past and its current ambitions.

First public flight after 90 years

The aircraft’s first public flights after restoration took place on 23 and 24 May 2026, following a program launched in July 2024 and led by Aéro Restauration Service in Dijon under pilot and restorer Bruno Ducreux.

Renault says the aircraft will now appear at several aviation events before joining Les Collections, the future Renault museum in Flins, due to open in late 2027.

The link goes back further than many people remember. Renault was not only an early carmaker but also an aircraft-engine manufacturer.

First World War

The company completed its first aircraft engine in 1908, and during the First World War, Renault engines powered aircraft, including the Breguet XIV A2 and the Voisin X night bomber.

In that sense, Renault’s first aviation role was largely industrial: it supplied power and engineering know-how to an emerging sector rather than building a public myth around flight.

The Caudron chapter changed that. Louis Renault, fascinated by aviation and amateur air racing, acquired the French aircraft manufacturer Caudron in 1933 and created Caudron-Renault.

He was the industrialist behind the project, not the celebrated pilot at its center. The glamour came from the machines and from the people who flew them: pilots such as Hélène Boucher and Raymond Delmotte.

Speed records and wind names

They turned Renault’s aviation investment into speed records, newspaper headlines, and a far more visible brand story. The aircraft were renamed after winds: Rafale, Simoun, Typhon, and Cyclone. In French, “rafale” means a gust or squall, an image that Renault now uses to evoke movement, aerodynamics, and a resolutely French form of technological daring.

The original Rafale, the Caudron-Renault C.460, was a single-seat racing aircraft designed by Marcel Riffard. Compact, lightweight, and highly streamlined, it belonged to an era when air racing was a showcase for speed and engineering progress.

Although it shares its name with Dassault’s later Rafale fighter jet, the Caudron-Renault Rafale was a very different machine: a 1930s racing aircraft built for records and aerodynamic efficiency, not a military program.

Women’s speed record

Renault acknowledges that association, but stresses that the name was already part of its own aviation history decades earlier through Caudron-Renault.

Renault highlights Hélène Boucher’s 1934 women’s speed record in the Rafale as part of the aircraft’s legend. In the company’s own storytelling, the aircraft has become a symbol of performance, modernity, and the conquest of new technological frontiers.

Plug-in hybrid with 300 hp

For today’s Renault, the value of the story is obvious. The modern Rafale SUV coupé is not technically related to the aircraft, but it borrows aviation language to give a mainstream brand model more prestige.

Renault positions the car as a showcase of its technology in Europe, available as a full hybrid or as a plug-in hybrid with 300 hp.

The latter combines a combustion engine with three electric motors, four-wheel drive, 4Control Advanced four-wheel steering, and up to 105 km of electric range. The Atelier Alpine version adds chassis work developed with Alpine engineers.

For Renault, reviving the C.460 is therefore a carefully timed act of brand building. It reconnects the company’s present product strategy with a chapter in which aircraft, record cars, and engine development were part of the same industrial imagination.

Renault is also extending that story beyond the air show itself, releasing a video on the “remake” of the legendary Rafale, retracing the aircraft’s restoration and return to flight.

The restored C.460 also sits neatly beside Renault’s broader heritage program, which is preparing a permanent showcase for nearly 130 years of company history in Flins.