The Heroes Of Racing No.7---The Renault 5 Turbo---If Hell Wanted A Hot Hatch, This Would Probably Be It.

Okay, the Renault 5 Turbo. What happens when Renault takes their dear old 5 Alpine(Also called the Gordini, named after Amedee Gordini, a French tuner with rather strong ties with Renault), hands it to, well, Alpine, and asks them to make it fast on a rally stage? This happens. The Hot Hatch, from Hell, bringing with it speed and noise, and the ability to leave a Golf GTI miles behind. And maybe the slight tendency to spin. I mean, when your wheelbase is nearly as short as a Stratos’, and with 80’s Turbo Technology being what it was, you can just tell what would happen.

Anyway, enough with that, on with the car.

Back When the winds of rallying were shifting favorably towards mid-engine layouts, Renault’s Jean Terramorsi, vice-president of Production, asked Bertone’s Marc Deschamps to design a new sports version of the Renault 5 Alpine to be used for Group 4 rallying homologation. Although the standard Renault 5 had a front-mounted engine and front wheel drive, the 5 Turbo featured a 1397 cc Cleon-Fonte Turbocharged engine(Turbocharger was a Garrett T3 Turbo), with stuff like a ‘Air-To-Air’ Intercooler, a strengthened crankshaft, revised head gaskets, new oil pump, and brass valve guides, both to increase output, and in the case of the last 4, to cope with the added strain, placed behind the driver mid-body in a Modified version of the 5’s chassis. And Though it used a modified body from a standard Renault 5, and was badged a Renault 5, the mechanicals were radically different, the most obvious difference being RWD and Mid-Engined instead of the normal car’s FWD and front-mounted engine. At the time of its launch it was the most powerful production French car.

As for the bodywork and suspension, The Renault 5’s front double-wishbone suspension was retained, but the rear suspension was the double-wishbone and coil-spring setup found on the Alpine-Renault A310. Oversized rear wheels, shod with 225-Section Michelin tires, required the use of exaggerated rear fenders, equipped with large intakes to feed air to the engine and radiators. And while the car may look a bit odd, its performance is nothing to laugh at, even in a mildly tuned state. Early road tests reported a 0-60 MPH time as low as 7.1 seconds, on the way to a claimed top speed of 125 MPH.

Renault’s initial plan was to produce the requisite 400 road-going examples, the minimum needed for homologation into Group 4. But when the covers came off the car at the 1980 Brussels Motor Show, Renault was surprised to see the level of customer interest in its narrowly-focused race car for the street. In the car’s first three production years, the Dieppe Alpine factory produced 1,820 R5 Turbos, though it isn’t clear how many examples wound up wearing registration plates instead of competition numbers.

Here are some of the R5 Turbo’s dimensions:
It measured in as 3360 mm long, 1750 mm wide, and was 1320 mm tall, and the wheelbase? Well, it was 2400 mm long, or around 300 mm longer than the Stratos’ I covered earlier this month.

After that, the first competition car was known as the ‘Cevennes’, apparently named to commemorate a rally of the same name(Criterium des Cevennes, is its name), it had 180 hp, and was driven by Jean Ragnotti to victory in the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally and ‘82’s Tour de Corse.

For 1983, Renault would introduce a new version of the car that was updated to Group B rules: it was known as the “Tour de Corse”. It originally featured 210 HP but as much as 285 HP was reported to be available by the end of ‘84. The car’s best WRC result would be a 3rd place podium finish at the ‘84 Tour de Corse, again driven by Ragnotti(I think he might be a recurring driver here..).

And then, just when you thought the R5 Turbo had hit its limit, In 1985, Renault upped the ante Again with the ultimate version of the R5 Turbo: known as the “Maxi”. It featured revised aerodynamic elements, a wider track, a larger 1527 cc engine that could produce up to 360 HP, and the “DPV” Anti-lag System to help provide instantaneous power. Ragnotti would win that year’s Tour de Corse Rally, proving the excellence of the car on French tarmac.(#NotSponsoredToSayThat) Only 20 of these cars were built. All for competition use, apparently.

It is notable to mention that ALL of the Works competition versions of the R5 Turbos were based on the “Turbo 1” homologation model. In the end, even though the R5 Turbo was mainly aimed at tarmac events and performed poorly in other types of rallies, it was very popular among privateers and was used extensively in the French Rally Championship and in the WRC.

Now, Once the original 400 homologation Turbo 1’s were produced, a second version named “Turbo 2” was introduced by using cheaper, steel Renault 5 parts to replace many of light alloy components(Aluminium, for example) found in the original 5 Turbo 1. Thus, the Turbo 2 was less expensive and could be sold at a more favorable price. That said, even with the extra weight, reportedly, performance wasn’t severely affected by the added weight of the steel bits. It is notable to mention that the Turbo 2 itself was homologated a few months later to allow customers to compete with the car. That said, reportedly, the Turbo 2’s fuel tank was slightly smaller, which would probably play into the price, too.

Although 3175 Turbo 2’s were sold to the general public, it could still be considered to be an homologation special. It’s the kind of car that you could probably have a blast in through the French countryside, presumably also taking in the views, and hopefully keeping your eyes on the road or not falling asleep. It may only have 160 HP, but it could still dash to 62 in 6.4 seconds. Its no slouch, then. And after the “Maxi” evolution, to which Renault built only 20 examples to be sold for competition use, you could source a factory kit to ‘Update’ your R5 Turbo 1/2 to the new spec. The car was very popular amongst the Tuners.

Production of the R5 Turbo ended in 1986, and by that time, according to Alpine factory records, some 5007 examples in total, from Turbo 1 to Turbo 2, had left the factory, with small numbers of cars finding their way to the US of A through Sun International(The gray Market) and it’d been in production for 6 years.
And as we all know, in 2001, Renault somewhat rebooted the concept of the R5 Turbo, with the making of the Clio V6 RS.

So, to conclude then. The Renault 5 Turbo was a Renault 5, that wasn’t really a R5 anyway, it was mid-engined, Turbocharged, and RWD, had a wheelbase nearly as short as a Stratos’, was made famous on the stages of the World Rally Championship, and, was sold in more numbers than any of the competition in the class. Nothing much else I can say about this dinky little Hatch From Hell. If you want one, you’ll need at least 77 grand, you can even buy the one featured in the Speedhunters.com article ‘The Volcanic Hot Hatch’, its currently listed on carandclassic.co.uk for 85 grand. But that’s probably too expensive for most of us around here, so you’ll buy the softer GT Turbo instead.

And on That Bombshell, you’ve finished the Seventh Entry into the ‘Heroes Of Racing’ Series, the Renault 5 Turbo, the hot hatch that redefined what you could do with one on the Street and the Stage, fundamentally changing the original front-engined, FWD layout for a mid-engine, RWD platform, yet still using the standard base chassis as a starting point. And at this point, I’ve run out of things to write now. Anyway, do feel free to leave overlooked details, advice and suggestions down below, and I hope you enjoyed it.

See you at the next one.