The Renault 5 Turbo is back: Wild hot hatch EV confirmed for production

A limited-run version of the Renault 5, called the Turbo 3E, will pack two motors and 500 horsepower

The car has two electric motors and 500 horsepower (Renault)

SPONSORED BY E.ON NEXT

The Independent's Electric Vehicles Channel is sponsored by E.ON Next.

The iconic Renault 5 Turbo will return as a high-powered electric hot hatch, the French company has confirmed.

As first reported exclusively by The Independent earlier this year, Renault has now confirmed it is preparing a production version of its wild R5 Turbo 3E concept.

Announced today and revealed in the final moments of a new Prime Video documentary series about Renault’s recent corporate turnaround, the car will be rear-wheel-drive, with a pair of electric motors producing 500 bhp – four times that of the standard Renault 5 E-Tech. That’s enough to launch the electric hot hatch to 62mph in 3.5 seconds, the company says. That is significantly quicker than the standard Renault 5’s time of 8.0 seconds.

Speaking about the potential for an electric Renault hot hatch, Renault Group CEO Luca De Meo told The Independent in October: “Yeah, that’s the future. I’m trying to find a way.”

The car will likely cost in the region of £100,000 to £150,000 (Renault)

And found a way he has. Alpine, Renault’s hard-working Formula One race team, has already produced a more performance-focused version of the Renault 5 called the Alpine A290, but the newly announced production version 5 Turbo will be unmistakably a Renault. Right down to the yellow paintwork.

Launching in 1980, the original Renault 5 Turbo has always been regarded as an iconic hot hatchback. Designed primarily for rallying – although road-legal versions were also sold to the public – the 5 Turbo swapped the standard car’s front-engined, front-wheel-drive setup for a mid-mounted, turbocharged engine that replaced the back seats and powered the rear wheels.

The 5 Turbo’s spiritual successor was the Clio V6, which followed the same recipe of taking a sensible city car and turning it into a high-performance, two-seat sports car. More recently, Renault revealed the R5 Turbo 3E, a concept car that teased the idea of an electric Renault 5 Turbo.

Images of the production version of the Renault 5 Turbo 3E show a retro-futuristic car that shares its basic form with the standard 5. But it also features a much wider body and huge air intakes ahead of the rear wheels, just like its predecessors. Boxy wheel arches also hark back to the original 5 Turbo, while the rear features a pair of Gurney flap-style rear wings on the boot lid, and a prominent rear diffuser jutting outwards from the bumper. Another detail is how the charging socket is in one of the rear air scoops.

Renault says the 5 Turbo can sprint to 62mph in 3.5s (Renault)

Renault hasn’t shared any interior imagery, but the new car can be spotted at the end of the fourth and final episode of Renault’s new Prime Video documentary series, called Anatomy of a Comeback and streaming from today, 13 December.

Having two electric motors instead of one means the new Renault 5 Turbo 3E should benefit from true torque vectoring, where the power and torque delivered to each rear wheel can be precisely controlled, maximising both agility and stability.

While we have praised the standard Renault 5 E-Tech for its low pricing, which starts at £22,995, the 5 Turbo 3E is expected to be significantly more expensive when it arrives in the next year or so. We suspect it could cost in the region of £125,000. Although Renault hasn’t said yet, the carbon-bodied car is expected to be built in relatively small numbers – likely fewer than the circa-5,000 examples of first- and second-generation 5 Turbos built in the eighties.