Vidal on the Renault 5 reborn electric

The good news is that – in the main, and especially at its front – the Renault 5 E-Tech has stayed refreshingly close to the 5 Prototype unveiled in January 2021.

The 5 Prototype design won instant and widespread public praise from old 5 fans and more, cleverly sampling various elements from multiple generations of the Renault 5, including the 1972 Mk1’s gently smiling front eyes, the 1984 Supercinq’s vertical rear lights and the Turbo’s wide shoulders. Former bonnet vents morphed into notional charging flaps and graphic flourishes echoed 1970s and 80s detailing. The prototype struck a chord with fellow car designers too, scooping up the most votes – and by some margin – to win CDN’s Concept Car Design of the Year award.

The Renault 5 E-Tech keeps the Prototype’s chunky proportions and also its details with only minor alterations – including downward-pointing outside edges to the front lights, and a different light signature inside. Now, a crosshair-style broken square outline replaces the Prototype’s zig-zags. The bonnet charging flap has moved to a more conventional position behind the front wheel arch, but the graphic bonnet punctuation is kept, as Gilles Vidal, Renault’s head of design, explains: “The original 5’s bonnet grille was an interesting graphical detail that inspired a charging flap on the prototype, but it was not in the best place for production, so now there is a digital interface there to show charging status instead.”

To the side, the production model has to make do with a graphic ‘5’ sticker at the front edge of each front door, where the Prototype had actual back-lit ‘5’ detailing, and the production E-Tech also gets a pair of rear doors, but utilising handles hidden in the rear black edge of the window frame, so the visual feeling and clean lines of a sporty three-door car remain. The production car only comes with 18-inch wheels and a 2.54-metre wheelbase and alongside short front and rear overhangs a great stance results. It’s 3.92 metres long – 90mm shorter than a current Clio – while 1.77m wide and 1.5m tall.

At the back there are some subtle aero details, including a three-dimensional vertical blade running down the rear light casing, a slight angle to the body work behind the rear wheel arch and a sharp edge to the bottom of the rear roofline. As Vidal explains honestly: “The best aerodynamic solutions don’t actually match the shape of the R5, so we used some tricks to create aero benefits.”

Less successful, to these eyes – compared to the Prototype’s chunky black bumper and red diamond logo integrated into the rear light signature – is the production car’s less confident and diminished Renault ‘word mark’ above the boot lip and a slightly fussy body-coloured section below it. Blame cost-cutting to get the car down to a €25,000 starting price (perhaps).

On the inside – not seen before in any guise, as the Prototype was an exterior-only design – there are lots of cool elements. Sporty H-shaped seats reference similar ones in the old Turbo model, while the vertically-ribbed and padded section of the passenger-side dashboard and grid of square shapes in the ceiling headliner both give a direct nod to previous models’ similar detailing (see comparison images).

But crucially, they function as interesting features with or without the knowledge of the original ‘sample’ – to use a musical analogy – and feel modern in their execution too. Alongside the figure-hugging seats, the sporty vibe is continued through a slightly driver-angled centre screen. “Even though it’s a Renault and more of a family car than a hot hatch, there is still a heritage of hot compact cars from Renault,” explains Vidal, “so we said ‘let’s just have a little tilt to the screen, without going hardcore sports’, especially as we have to admit that often, there will only be one person on board anyway.”

The central screen is contained within the same frame as the driver display and its software showcases the first use of Renault’s new diamond logo-shaped avatar called ‘Reno’. “It will help you interact with the car,” says Vidal, “and if for example you say you are a bit warm, it can suggest opening the correct window nearest to where you are sitting, because it recognises where your voice is coming from.” Whether you want a virtual digital assistant in your car or not, the slightly ‘kids TV’ style character Reno seems at odds with the slicker nature of the other screen graphics though. Apparently, somewhere within the system it can be turned off.

Personalisation is a big part of the new 5’s option list and potential character. It can be made sportier by the application of decals in all sorts of places and even different-coloured physical parts added – to the end of the gear selector as just one example. But if the vibe sought is more homemaker than racer, clip-on wicker baskets designed to house a bunch of flowers or even a slim, and suitably French baguette, are also official accessories. Unusual new materials on the R5 include an automotive-grade denim-style fabric and grey marl upholstery, while the sound design comes courtesy of pioneering French electronic music maestro, Jean-Michel Jarre.

All in all then, the new Renault 5 E-Tech has a very strong (French) character with interesting tech features, details and options. And it’s a sign of the design team’s confidence that they chose to show the new production car directly alongside both the wow-inducing 2021 Prototype and the smart and even earlier 2019-20 Echo concept (the orange car in our group shot photos) plus the Mk1, Mk2 and Turbo Renault 5s all in the same room. Within that storied context, the new Renault 5 E-Tech doesn’t look out of place.

First deliveries of the 248-mile range EV are due in the first quarter of 2025.