The portmanteau name comes from "colonial" and "rural". Designed for driving in France, but also in more exotic locations, the Colorale's true temperament is as an adventure vehicle. In the 1951 Algiers-Cape Rally, it covered 15,000 km at an average speed of 50 km/h. The following year, it clocked up 42,000 km between Tierra del Fuego and Alaska, with an acrobatic ascent stage at Lake Titicaca (4,800 m).

The Colorale was also the star of a major automotive première on the Tibesti-Congo-Ethiopia expedition: it drove along 30,000 km of extremely rough unmarked tracks. This was a stupendous exploit, hailed by all the press. Although overloaded, the other models in the range that accompanied the Colorale on that adventure played the role of all-terrain vehicles, demonstrating their exceptionally robust design.