The Renault 5 Turbo is cool for a ton of reasons, the most obvious being that it started life as a front-engined city runaround and got a factory rear-engine conversion, and another being that it looked simply insane with those huge flared rear fenders. You might also throw in that it was purpose-designed as a rally car, or that it had one of the wildest interiors ever seen on a production car.
Renault built the Turbo in two phases, but only the first, which retrospectively became known as the Turbo 1, got the zany Bertone-designed interior with its available bold red and blue colorways, asymmetric steering wheel, bespoke instrument pack, and gorgeous sci-fi bucket seats. Turbo 2s made do with regular Renault 5 Alpine hot hatch seats and dashboards as part of a cost-cutting drive.
Only 1,820 Turbo 1s were made (compared with 3,167 Turbo 2s) and they’re now worth well over $100k, so there aren’t a ton of those special seats floating around, but one set has just cropped up for sale on Bring a Trailer, which got us wondering where the best home for them might be.
Related: What’s Your Ideal Driving Seat?
You could make a great office chair, but then you’d have one left over so maybe you could create a frame for each one and turn them into lounge furniture that would be guaranteed to be a conversation starter any time you invited new neighbors around. Or maybe they should be used as Bertone intended and dropped into another pocket rocket. I think they could look really cool on an original Toyota MR2, which has the right kind of 1980s exterior vibe and never came with chairs this cool.
I really like the patina on this pair and how the sun has faded the bright reds to a muted orange. But if you wanted to bring the pop back, and sort the marks on the leather you could re-upholster them with covers from Les Selliers du Domaine. The French company specializes in trim for classic Renault and Alpine cars and can supply replacement foams for the Turbo’s Bertone seats as well as covers and matching door cards and carpets in the classic red and blue, plus the less commonly seen but classy black or beige pinstripe (check them out in the gallery below). What would you do with this classic set of sport seats?
