Hello!
Nice work here - pure glueing fun, eh? I remember building the Tamiya Flakvierling 38, I needed like one hour and it "operated" in elevation and traverse complete with that sight moving together with the guns. That was no "turd" or "glue bomb", just not built to my today's standards, but a lot of fun none the less.
As for the ICM kits - that discussion reminds me about my ZiL-131 truck (the Ukrainian one) - now that kit looked really good on the sprues with a lot of detail, but when I compared it with the (much more expensive) Bronco kit, and especially with the real thing I realized how simplified it was. Like it pretended to have a coplete chassis/underside, but it didn't have the brake chambers for example... Anyhow, those simplifications made for a quick and fun build.
Cap'n - I think your intuition puts you on the right track here, driving vehicles like that with the engine exposed is very common, especially if it needs a lot of maintenance, breaks often and the cover is flimsy to begin with, plus you don't have a lot of time to remedy all this - and I bet that Renault fits those conditions.
My school colleague once told me about how he rode a small van with the tank fuel pump busted. So his uncle was driving, and my colleague got the job of pouring fuel from a milk bottlle directly into the carburator to keep the engine running... That musta have been a ride... Of course the engine had to be exposed to do this...
Good luck with buildoing that Renault and have a nice day
Paweł