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Petrolicious Catches Up With The Lucky Owner Of Renault’s Little Rally Monster, The R5 Turbo!


Petrolicious Catches Up With The Lucky Owner Of Renault’s Little Rally Monster, The R5 Turbo!

Bring up Renault in America, and the imagery is enough to make most gearheads sick: the dysfunctional marriage to American Motors. The Renault Alliance, Fuego, and “Le Car”. Renault had tried to enter the market even before that unholy pact was made…in the 1950s, Renault brought the Dauphine to American shores, and to call what happened next an unmitigated disaster would be doing the phrase a disservice. Acres of unsold and unwanted Renaults sat at the docks. Two cargo ships were turned away from the ports because there was no more room for the cars. They rusted to death on a dry and sunny day, parts fell off, the electrics were crap, and so on. Renault even bought advertising space and publicly apologized for the cars…yeah, that bad. So saying “1980s Renault” is normally going to get you derision, snickers, and disgusted looks.

But in every dark cloud, a silver lining, and this car was it: the Renault R5 Turbo. From the factory that was burping out normal little crackerbox R5s and their USDM “Le Car” siblings that were meant to be quirky, kind of cute, and certainly French, the R5 Turbo was altogether different: from it’s wide hips at the rear to it’s turbocharged 1.4L four-cylinder mounted in a rear/rear layout (versus the R5’s front drive situation), the R5 Turbo was the Mr. Hyde of the pair. Sure, 158 horsepower and 163 ft/lbs of torque don’t sound like much, but this is a tiny car, and tuning is a thing…a little tweak here, a little massage there, and you can improve on what was France’s fastest production car. Cristophe Guerin had driven a R5 Turbo directly from the factory in 1980, and had to have one of his own. Doesn’t hurt that he lives just a few minutes from the race track in LeMans, France…racing has been in his system for decades, and he spent time working on rally crews. But that first drive hooked him…he had to have one.


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5 thoughts on “Petrolicious Catches Up With The Lucky Owner Of Renault’s Little Rally Monster, The R5 Turbo!

  1. john

    During the “energy crisis” of the mid- 70’s I drove a Le Car to night school from the Jersey shore to Trenton State College. Went through two sets of front axles, twisted the body so badly taking corners, the fuse block under the dash would short out losing the lights. Shitty but fun to toss around. 🙂

  2. jerry z

    It’s amazing how much the LeCar being such a POS yet the R5 turbo is an iconic vehicle. Yes I want one.

  3. Benoit

    This car had a little sister, the R5 Alpine. No turbo but it was the sporty version of the standard car known as R5 and did not seem to have the same issues as the models build for the US market, LeCar. The Alpine twice as powerful, had a hemi head that also required a shorter spark plug wrench for the last cylinder. R5 had a longitudinal engine position with the transmission mounted at the front of the car. Because of the hemi design on the A5, the farthest plug was located under body, past the hood and almost touching the firewall. There was so much heat in that area that it required the car to cool off almost entirely before changing that plug. I did not drive any apart from around the shop, but from the set up it sounds like a pleasant car drive on small roads and it was fairly popular as well. The competition was the transversal Golf GTI that came out I believe the same year.

    The Turbo had a very stiff clutch and made it very hard to move in tight spaces like busy shops but yes it was the real deal, TheCar.

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