“Le Performance Car”…nope. “When there is a car from the country that just built the world’s fastest train”…congrats on the train, now try again. “Le gas goes slowly. The car doesn’t.” We call bullshit. “Le Fun Car”.  Ugh…the advertising pitches for the Renault 5, better known to most Americans as the “Le Car”, reeked of a superiority complex that was completely unwarranted. The car was brought to the States via Renault’s partnership with American Motors, and I remember spotting the little things everywhere I went…you couldn’t miss “Le Car” in huge letters on the doors no matter how hard you tried. I haven’t seen one in the flesh in at least a decade, maybe more, and even then it was rotting away behind a decrepit house in Southern Illinois somewhere, forgotten, as it should be. For once, I’m glad I didn’t experience what it was like to drive. If this car made a Ford Fiesta look good, I’m alright.

We got the weak-suck version. But there were good Renault 5s…it was the benefit of homologation. Group B rally racing saw the Renault 5 Turbo become a thing…it was technically based on the 5, but instead of being a wheezing front-driver with a negative reading on the driving fun meter, it was a rear-mid mounted, turbocharged four-cylinder powered street freak wearing wide hips and a serious attitude problem. 158 horsepower in a car that could probably fit in the bed of a late-model Ram 3500 makes for a slightly twitchy, very potent little pocket rocket, indeed.