Renault is considering plans to build a low-volume super hot hatch based on the Renault 5 Turbo 3E concept car from 2022.
Word had gone quiet on any production version of the 375bhp concept, but when quizzed on the future of fast Renaults now that Alpine is firmly established as the group’s performance brand, CEO Luca de Meo said the company was “trying to find a way” to build a worthy fast Renault.
Insiders said that the car would wear the Renault 5 name, but be built on a bespoke spaceframe chassis with a price tag of potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds.
When pushed on the plan, Renault’s design chief Laurens van den Acker didn’t deny the project’s existence, but said a one-off low-volume car was “not high on our priority list right now”.
“Obviously, we fill our drawers with sketches of our dreams, and this would be one of them,” he said. “We always have ideas, every designer has his dream cars in his drawers.”
A limited production version of the 5 Turbo 3E concert would be a successor to the R5 Turbo from 1980. A car primarily designed as a mid-engined rally homologation special, just under 5,000 examples were built costing around £12,000, three times that of a regular Renault 5. The Turbo became much loved by fast Renault fans, with examples now selling for over £80,000.
Renault boss de Meo said at the 2022 unveiling of the Turbo 3E concept that funding would be a bigger problem than technical solutions in turning the wild show car into a reality.
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