I remember this car for two incidents, in the UK about 1960 a friends father was stopped at some traffic lights while driving a Dauphine, some youths determined to show their strength started lifting the car by the rear bumper. They kept lifting the car and dropping it, when the lights changed my friends father gunned the car leaving the youths behind. On arriving home he looked at the bumper for any signs of damage, he was shocked to find a finger caught behind the bumper, he did not report the incident and disposed of the finger in the garbage.
Five or six years later I spotted another Dauphine that was parked in the middle of a lane, passing the car I saw that it had rusted so badly that it had collapsed midpoint between the wheels with the rocker panels touching the ground. Unable to move the car caused quite a traffic jam, the owner was not to be seen, I guess all the honking and the embarrassment was too much for him.
One journalist wrote that you could hear them rust.