- The brand’s design boss is interested in making the car but says it isn’t a priority at the moment.
- Renault chief executive Luca de Meo previously acknowledged the car’s future rests solely on finances.
It’s only been a few months since the Alpine A290 GT premiered as the performance-focused version of the new-age Renault 5 E-Tech, but the car manufacturer is open to building an even more insane model with the famed Renault 5 badge.
Long before the new 5 E-Tech premiered as a rival to the Mini Cooper EV, Renault provided the world with a tantalizing look of a future electric super hatch with the 5 Turbo 3E. The car, showcased purely as a concept, looked like a modern Group B rally weapon and insiders say there’s an internal push within Renault to make this vehicle a production reality.
Read: Renault R5 Turbo 3E Is A Modern EV Take On The Homologation Special
Auto Express claims the vehicle could be built around a bespoke spaceframe chassis and may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Renault design chief Laurens van den Acker acknowledged such a vehicle was “not high on our priority list right now,” but didn’t deny the project’s existence.
“Obviously, we fill our drawers with sketches of our dreams, and this would be one of them,” he said. “We always have ideas, every designer has his dream cars in his drawers.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the potential for the car to become a production reality. In late 2022, Renault chief executive Luca de Meo said the brand had found a way to bring something close to the concept to the road, but said it was all a matter of money. At the time, de Meo acknowledged that Renault didn’t have “deep, deep pockets.”
For the concept, Renault’s engineers opted to install a pair of electric motors combining to deliver 375 hp and 516 lb-ft (700 Nm) of torque. Providing the motors with their juice is a 42 kWh lithium-ion battery pack, and impressively, Renault said the car weighs just 980 hp (2,160 lbs) and can hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in 3.5 seconds.
Renault has knocked it out of the park with the retro-themed 4 E-Tech and 5-Tech, and a bonkers super electric hatch could be the brand’s ultimate halo model. Fingers crossed.
