Iconic hatches
Honda’s £47k Civic Type R is a great in waiting. But if it’s a hot hatch icon you’re after, the likes of Lancia’s Delta Integrale and the Renault 5 Turbo have to be on your watch list… Here’s how to put a legend in your lock-up
RENAULT 5 TURBO 2
Inspired by the mid-engined Lancia Stratos, Renault made its 5 into a supercar
One winter Sunday night in 1997 I was taught a humbling lesson – that turbocharging in a lightweight Renault gets results.
On a riot of an A-road I knew like the back of my hand, a pair of headlights caught me through a village. As the speed limit lifted, I decided to show this upstart all the straight-line bombast my 205 XS could muster, clogging it in third and letting the Pug’s sawn-off gearing and insignificant mass do the rest.
Except that rather than freefall in my mirrors, the headlights came alongside before overtaking with a clean precision my poor brain found difficult to comprehend. Those lights belonged to a
Renault 5 GT Turbo – and clearly its pilot was having fun. For the next 10 miles or so they ripped on ahead, only to pull over, let me pass, and then overtake me with impunity all over again, like a Spitfire toying with a lost and damaged Dornier.
The front-engined Renault 5 GT Turbo made 115bhp initially, 120bhp later, from an unlikely combination of ancient pushrod four and a Garrett T3 turbo. It was also light; at 850kg, it was lighter even than a 205. I’d never encountered anything like it, but it could have been worse. Those lights could have belonged to a 5 Turbo, the mid-engined miscreant Renault put out in the giddy early years of its infatuation with forced induction.
The 5 Turbo arrived in 1980, a homologation oddball created in response to the success of the mid-engined Lancia Stratos in rallying and given an unlikely elegance by Marcello Gandini at Bertone. Its longitudinal, mid-mounted 1397cc four was good for 160bhp, a towering figure for a sub-1000kg car in the early ’80s. Fewer than 2000 5 Turbos were built, their whole the sum of some eclectic parts, from Alpine A310 suspension through lightweight aluminium panels to a fever dream of an interior.
The later 2 was more numerous (more than 3000 were built), more affordable and only slightly heavier. This 38,000-mile 2 from 1984 belonged to George Thatcher, marketing man at specialists 4 Star Classics in Hampshire.
RENAULT 5 TURBO 2
PRICE THEN/VALUE NOW £8.5k/£90k
POWERTRAIN 1397cc 8v turbocharged inline-four, five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
PERFORMANCE 160bhp @ 6000rpm, 155lb ft @ 3250rpm, 7.7sec 0-62mph, 126mph
LEGACY The wild competition-only Maxi; Max Power’s wide-arch obsession; the Clio V6
‘It’s just great fun, and I like this car’s rare colour, Bleu M
