► Gavin Green on new Renault 5
► What’s appeal of retro design?
► Reinventing icons: perils and pluses
I have happy memories of the old Renault 5. The new electric 5 may have as much in common with it technically as a virtual-reality headset does with a beret. But here was a car I really wanted to drive, and maybe even buy.
Nostalgia played a part. I fondly remember thrashing a basic-spec R5 around the Nurburgring, back in the days when you turned up, paid a few D-marks and were let loose.
It rolled and pitched like a small boat in a swell. But I swear I’ve never had so much fun at the ’Ring. It provided a lifelong lesson: speed is irrelevant to driving enjoyment. (One reason I dislike most hypercars: all figures and no feel.)
Later, I raced a Renault 5 GT Turbo in a frenzied one-make series. Soon after, we bought a Clio, the 5 follow-up.
More important than the beret-and-baguette nostalgia is the way the new electric 5 looks. It has all the old 5’s charm and many of its cues. But it looks as cutting-edge modern as the latest iMac.
So just after New Year, a bright Pop Green Renault 5 E-Tech turned up in my drive. It created much interest, not just from grey-hairs keen to reminisce about old Renault 5s, and not just because of its arresting pea-green paintjob.
Even before it went on sale in the UK, it was big news. That’s the advantage of a famous name. The UK media normally reacts to the launch of a new Renault with a shrug of Gallic indifference.
It’s the same EV nostalgia card played by the Mini three-door hatch, the Fiat 500e, the VW Buzz, and – far less convincingly – the Ford Mustang, Explorer and Capri (badges of convenience, not conviction). And now there’s the new Grande Panda, and soon a revamped Renault 4.
The R5, along with the Mini, 500, Panda and R4, is an everlasting design, functional, practical, pretty and classless, and likely to be equally appealing to men and women. They’re all perfect starting points for modern reboots.
They work well as EVs too. Drive a new 5 and you certainly don’t miss the old four-pot motor. That’s part of the problem with the revamped Mustang. The old car’s major appeal was its Days of Thunder V8 soundtrack.
I asked my friend Frank Stephenson about the appeal of nostalgia. Frank, as you may know, was responsible for the design of the 2001 BMW Mini and the 2007 Fiat 500, probably the two most successful small European cars of the past 25 years, and both 21C reboots of much-loved old tots.
‘There’s comfort in nostalgia,’ he told me. ‘You supposedly go back to better times. Also, you must remember what made the Mini and 500 successful in the first place. That was partly their design simplicity. And simple designs are more timeless designs.’
The new R5 is another example of how EVs can be highly desirable, and how they’ve made cars interesting again. It’s also worth remembering that Renault is rather good at EVs. It’s been doing it longer than any other Euro maker: the Zoe was Europe’s first modern-era mass-market EV, launched the same year as the Tesla Model S (2012).
The electric 5 is also terrific value. It’s similar money (from £22,995) to the cheaper Chinese offerings, and way more appealing.
Heritage cannot be retro-engineered
Fighting Chinese value with Euro nostalgia is a clever strategy, and China cannot respond in the same way: nobody wants to buy a reborn version of the 1959 Hongqi CA72.
However, the Chinese car makers can play the nostalgia card in a different way, by buying history. Take MG. The new and impressive Cyberster is a reborn MG TF/MGB roadster, with some of the pro- ceeds going to the Chinese state.
The Chinese also control Lotus and Volvo, and own the rights to Austin, Morris and Wolseley – all part of old MG Rover. We will surely see a reborn electric Elan, and long ago there was talk of a revised Morris Minor.
An Austin Allegro E, though, may be a step too far.