The Nervastella is a large automobile constructed by Renault between 1930 and 1937. It was used as a state car and pictures of the President of the French Republic sitting in a Nervastella can therefore be seen in newsreels from the mid-1930s. The car was a smaller brother to the Renault Reinastella which had been launched a year earlier, but the Nervastella was technically more advanced, and with a wheelbase it was still, by the standards of the time and place, large. In the early 1930s Renault introduced a number of models with names that ended in "-stella", which was a conscious reference to the Latin word for a "star". "Nerva" is a reference to a Roman emperor, and Nerva, Spain. Engines The car was powered by a 8-cylinder in-line engine, but the size of the power unit changed through the car's production run. The Nervastella was launched with a 4241 cc engine for which of power was listed, achieved at a then impressively quick 3300 rpm. The engine size grew to 4825 cc in 1933 and increased again, for 1935, to 5448 cc. The 1933 increase was not accompanied by any increase in claimed maximum power for the standard Nervastella, and even the 1935 engine capacity increase only raised the listed output to . Evolution The car originally appeared as a four-door "Berline" (saloon/sedan) or as a "Coupé de ville" (large two door luxury coupé). The range was extended a year later with the long wheel-base "six-light" limousine with an extra pair of side windows between the C-pillar and the rear doors and space for five or seven people. A reduced specification version, sharing the 4241 cc engine of the Nervastella, badged as the Renault Nervahuit was exhibited at the Paris Motor Show in October 1930 and offered during 1931. The Nervahuit's starting price in January 1931, of 48,000 francs for a torpedo bodied car, compared with a starting price for a standard "Berline" (saloon/sedan) bodied Nervastella of 95,000 francs. There was a complete model change in 1932: the word "aérodynamique" is much in evidence in reports on the Renault range in the early 1930s. The "Nervastella ZD2" cars now received "American-style" pressed-steel bodies with mildly sloping tails associated with the newly arriving "aerodynamic" fashion of the time. In this form, the Nervastella was effectively a longer wheel base version of the manufacturer's (already substantial) Vivastella model. The "standard"