I have a soft spot for the Renault Alliance, the car that singlehandedly lifted and crushed American Motors and Renault in the US.
What readers from outside North America may remember as the Renault 9, the Alliance was AMC’s last chance in the U.S. And AMC was always a company with limited resources that had to think out of the box to get attention.
What better way than to do a deal with a French company known for quirky stuff like the Dauphine and the Fuego. Instead, the first car to be developed with Americans in mind was the conventional-looking Alliance. The wackiest thing about it was the pedestal-style front bucket seats.
From 1982 through ’84, things were going OK. But by 1986, few people were interested in a French car built in Wisconsin anymore. Naturally, more performance was the answer, in the form of the ’87 Renault GTA.
Here, Motorweek digs up their first GTA review from the archives. Even then, the GTA looked extremely rectilinear and the body kit and “large” 14-inch wheels looked odd on the conservative Alliance’s body. Yet the silliness of it all makes this car endearing in my eyes, in contrast to the buttoned-down look Volkswagen gave the Golf when they made it a GTI.
I’m sure you could’ve even made the case in 1987 that the GTA was the budget BMW 3-series – they were about as square, anyway. Also consider in the mid-’80s, a 325e was putting out just 121 horsepower from a 2.5-liter straight six. The 95 horses from the Renault’s 2.0-liter four doesn’t sound so bad after all. Every now and then when one of these GTAs pops up on eBay, I think about it for a second. And then quickly move on.
Renault packed it up in the U.S. in 1987 after it sold its stake in AMC to Chrysler, stopped production of the Alliance and never returned. Consider this video Renault’s swan song, while the rest of you get to enjoy their newer products.