Why am I such a big fan of the Renault 5?
Renault's new small electric car has really caught my eye and I've posted about it and the Alpine A290 hot hatch as well. I've posted about them a lot. What gives?
I am a hatchback fan. I love them for their size – particularly the B-segment as they're called in Europe. Cars like the Peugeot 205 and 306, Ford Fiesta, Hyundai i20, I just dig them.
Growing up in Australia that size of car was dominated by Japanese brands like Toyota and Mazda. While those cars were – and still are – very good cars, they're not especially fun. The Yaris GR is the wild, out-of-the-blue exception.
Mazda has never really done a proper hot hatch and the one they did do, the Mazda MPS, is an insane torque-steerer in the mould of the infamously messy Alfa 33.
I've owned a few B-segment cars and even an A-segment. I've already name-checked the Peugeots – I had a 1989 Peugeot 205 GTI grey import, a box-fresh 2002 Peugeot 306 XSI and more recently a 1998 Peugeot 306 GTI-6 which I loved but its problems were beyond my limited abilities (the new owner is doing a nut and bolt restoration and I can't wait to see the result).
Add to that the Renaultsport Clio 172, the VW up! (okay, that's then A-seg) and a string of BMW 1 Series, most notably a manual 2007 130i and right now I own a 2007 130i automatic and a 2011 135i DCT.
I dream of owning a Fiesta ST, car I absolutely loved every time I drove one. So I'm a fan of the smaller size.
Absent from this list is, obviously, the Renault 5. We didn't get them in Australia. My brother owned a pair of Renault 12s, one built here in Australia and one built at home, a Virage. After the departure of the mighty 12 (later to become a very long-lived Dacia, the 1300) and the 16 (what a car), Renault disappeared from the Australian passenger vehicle scene.
The original 5 overlapped both the 12 and 16 but as I say, we didn't get it here. It was very much built for the roads and lanes of urban and rural France and because of that, worked well all over Europe. The first-gen ran from 1972 to 1985, an absolute age in modern automotive terms.
It spawned Gordini and Alpine version as well as the mad 5 Turbo, a mid-engined rocket later and amusingly recreated by rival Renault with the Clio V6. Again by modern standards the 5 Turbo was hardly a tarmac-tearer with just 118kW, but the concept is clearly mad and it weighed nothing.
Also mad was AMC's attempts to sell the car in the US under the name Le Car. Blimey.
Anyway. The new 5 is retro done right, a proper homage to the Michel Boué original. That was a car he doodled in his spare time that somehow got an audience with the execs and was commissioned for production.
Sadly Boué died of cancer not long after the original car's launch and would never have lived to see the success of the original let alone see it recreated in his very old age. But the fact the original was so well-designed and in such a genuinely timeless fashion, the new R5 takes the recognisable parts, the iconography of Boué's 5 and delivers something extraordinary.
But that's not all of it.
The new 5 is built on Renault's new small car electric vehicle platform, the AmpR Small, a derivative of the Nissan-Renault CMF-B EV platform. Renault has been quietly getting on with the business of developing EVs for a long time, with the Renault Zoe selling almost 450,000 units over 12 years on sale. It wasn't a great car but it wasn't a bad one either and I was quite fond of it. You can pick them up really cheaply if you need a city runabout.
AmpR is really clever. It uses a lot of parts that don't matter if they're carried over from ICE vehicles, in this case the Clio's CMF-B platform. Renault has already spun-off the New Renault 4, another well-designed homage, from that platform.
For an EV, it's light, coming under 1500kg. It has a decent range with the larger of two battery packs and it has an expensive but worthwhile multi-link rear suspension setup.
From everything I have read, it recalls the original values of the 5 and places them squarely where electric cars need to be in 2024. Usable, dependable and fun. The Renault 5 E-Tech as it's known looks to be fun to drive but comfortable and therefore fun and usable. It isn't a clean-sheet design with lots of well-proven parts, so looks to be dependable.
It isn't hyper-expensive and does what French hatchbacks do so well – put a smile on your face even if it's a bit on the slow side because it steers and rides with effortless character and style.
From what I've read and seen, it has a lot of what the Fiat 500e has but without the silly price and with a lot more room. Electric cars need to be as good as the 500e without the price tag. They need to be as good (at minimum) as a Tesla without the unnecessary size of the 3 and Y that many people don't want in a second car or even their only car.
From a design perspective, the Renault 5 gets it right where the New Beetle got it wrong, at least for a lot of people. It's not self-conscious and it's not cynical. There's a joyful vibe about the R5 and it wears the importance of its release well.
I cannot wait to have a drive of it and the Alpine. I may even be thinking of buying a 5 because it seems like an incredibly sensible car but with an abundance of design flair and chassis excellence.
