Can new the new Clio spark a revival for Renault in the UK?

What links the Espace, the Laguna, and the Wind? That’s right – they’re all models the French firm’s quietly dropped from the UK because they hadn’t proved a hit with buyers on this side of the Channel. 

That’s why they’ve put so much effort into the latest version of what’s been their supermini staple for more than two decades – the Clio. We’ve already looked at the potent 2.0 litre Renaultsport 200 Turbo version but chances are that it’s going to be its less manic little brother, which goes on sale at dealerships across the UK at the end of the month, that’ll be so crucial to the company’s fortunes in this country.

It’s certainly got the looks style-savvy supermini shoppers crave – check out those Alfa 156-esque rear doors, for instance, cleverly designed to disguise the fact it’s the first Clio in the model’s 22 year history that’ll be offered only as a five door.   

More importantly, depending on which version you pick it’ll be around 100kg lighter than the car it replaces, which makes it kinder on fuel (great for when you’re not belting it around like a boy racer) and quicker off the mark and more nimble (great for when you are).

Thanks to the prospect of a £10,595 starting price, fine looks and the prospect of gadgets like an in-car tablet, I reckon the new Clio might well be good enough to make it fourth time lucky for Renault.

I’m looking forward to finding out whether the new Clio goes as well as it looks.

New Renaultsport Clio promises hot hatch thrills

THROTTLE-happy hedonists will be delighted to learn that a new Renaultsport Clio has just been announced.

Closely based on the all new Clio range announced by Renault earlier this year, the new hot hatch swaps the old car's 2.0 litre engine for a 1.6 turbo unit, and while power remains roughly the same at 200bhp it's torquier and kinder to the environment than its predecessor.

Renaultsport MD Patrice Ratti had this to say about the new arrival: "New Clio Renaultsport 200 Turbo proclaims loud and clear the values of Renault Sport: beautiful and fast, it has everything that’s needed to make it the benchmark car in the high-performance sports hatchback class – just like its predecessors.

"The introduction of a very high performance turbocharged engine, with plenty of torque at low revs and coupled to the EDC dual clutch transmission (Efficient Double Clutch) developed by Renault Sport engineers, results in a car that raises the performance driving experience to a new level. The expertise of Renault Sport Technologies is reinforced by long-term programmes in the most demanding types of motorsport, including racing and rallying.

"It is this experience which makes us so passionate about handling feedback, and you can feel this the moment you drive any of the Renault performance derivatives we have developed. We’re also proud to be producing the Renaultsport in Dieppe, home of Alpine, and delighted to be using the EDC gearbox in a Renaultsport version for the first time."

Perhaps more importantly, keen drivers will be offered two different chassis settings with the new model - a Sport chassis, which is aimed at providing driving kicks with a dash of everyday comfort, and the harder Cup chassis, which has been designed with trackday fans in mind. There's also a fun button for go-faster drivers to press, called the R. S. Drive, which sharpens up the throttle and gearbox responses when it's pressed.

If that's not enough, there's also an accoustic gadget called R-Sound Effect, which replicates engine noises through the speakers, meaning you can literally make the new Renaultsport Clio sound better than it actually is!

Expect to find the new Renaultsport Clio lining up at a trackday near you from early next year.

The old Renault 5, not the new one, is the perfect car for Cameron's Britain

TORIES and Liberal Democrats, look away now. The buzzword I’ve heard most since the establishment of Cameron’s Britain is “austerity”.

Blame who you like but austerity is everywhere, from the library that shut down six months ago to the vacant shops dotting the town centres. The TV screens are awash with anarchic imagery of Greek people burning things and news correspondents looking confused, unsure of which political party or city banker to blame it all on. Everyone knows these are austere times. Except Renault.

The French, you see, are reckoning on a reinvention of the iconic Renault 5 as a way to light up the supermini market in the way the latest Clio and Twingo haven’t, but they’re making the mistake of tilting it squarely at the Citroen DS3. This, in Cameron’s Britain, is a mistake.

I like to think I know a bit about the Renault 5 because I owned one and absolutely loved it. While the fact my very ropey Campus model cost just £100 helped, it really was the archetypal austerity car. Due to the fact it came with absolutely no equipment at all the engineering effort went into making sure the few bits you did get worked perfectly, and even after 120,000 miles it still started on the button every single time. I suspected it’d survive everything up to and including a light nuclear blast.

It was also much, much quicker than an ancient 1.4 hatchback had any right to be and easily the most spacious car I’ve owned. Both, I suspect, down to there being absolutely nothing in the way of luxuries to weigh it down or clutter it up. Prison cells come better equipped these days than the old 5 did.

But the new one, if predictions are right, won’t be a car for peasants and paupers, but a posh one with all sorts of unnecessarily bourgeois equipment like cruise control and electric windows and central locking. In the old one, you were lucky if you got a working heater!

What Cameron’s Britain of spending cuts and soaring unemployment needs isn’t a Renault 5 that’s weighed down with pricey electrical equipment that’ll only break anyway. It needs a real replacement for the old warhorse, which offers cash-strapped families a five star Euro NCAP safety rating – another Renault tradition, don’t forget – and absolutely nothing else so that they too can afford a brand new car.

Then again, even if Renault does bring out a new and rather more decadent reinvention of the 5 it won’t reach us until at least 2014. Maybe they know something about an economic recovery the rest of us don’t?