Van drivers seem to have an uncanny ability to make even the lowliest diesel travel at close to hot hatch speeds, but this DIY Renaultsport Kangoo really would give plenty of GTIs something to worry about.
What appears to have started life – judging by the badges on the doors – as a 1.5-liter diesel Kangoo van with a miserable 68 hp (70 PS), is now the owner of a full Renaultsport Clio engine and suspension setup from the same era giving it almost three times as much muscle.
That might at first seem like a fairly crazy mashup, but it makes perfects sense when you realize that the first-generation Kangoo built between 1997 and 2009 was based on the second-generation Clio. So while swapping the guts out of an early 2000s Clio 182 hot hatch and into the Kangoo wouldn’t have been an evening’s work, we imagine it would have been a fairly straightforward conversion that took this van from sleepy to sleeper.
Dropping in the stock drivetrain from an 80,000-mile (129,000 km) Clio 182 would have given the Kango an instant lift to 180 hp (182 PS) and sub-7-second zero to 60 mph (97 kmh) performance. But the seller says the engine has received a set of cams from the later Clio 197 plus a ported and polished inlet, a performance air filter, stainless steel exhaust and a remap that together deliver just under 200 hp (203 PS).
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But the Kangoo didn’t just get the engine from the Renaultsport Clio. It also stole its entire Cup front suspension setup, which as then upgraded with a set of Cooksport lowering springs, PBS Race compound brake pads, Brembo HC discs and Eibach camber bolts. The Speedline wheels are wrapped with Nankang NS-2R road legal slicks and are located by studs rather than bolts for speedy pit stops.
But most other drivers on the road wouldn’t even notice the wheels, let alone the ride height or aggressive camber setting. They’d just see a plain old white van, which wears a cheeky sticker claiming the Kangoo is ‘Limited To 62 MPH.’ Even the interior keeps up the ruse, the stock seats deflecting attention from the Renaultsport steering wheel and gear knob, while the cargo bay is the same as in any well-used small diesel van bar some basic carpeting.
This car’s up for grabs on eBay in the UK for £6,999 and looks like a riot. The seller – who’s owned the car for a couple of years but didn’t perform the conversion – says he has a pair of 182 seats that will go with it, but we’d be tempted to keep the poverty chairs and maybe even swap the Speedlines for some anonymous steelies to create a van that’s absurdly stealthy. Sleeper? Coma, more like.
