Apology
The one-day delay of Sunday Drive #5 is intentional; I wanted to wait for the launch of one of the most interesting cars premiers of the past few months. Today, the Renault 5 debuted – a modern variation on the iconic French city car from 1972.
Fifty years, from a technological standpoint, is quite a long time, and the new version is no less progressive than the original. Electric, of course, the 5 is based on the new "AmpR Small" platform. It's front-wheel drive, with a range of up to 400 km (from a 52 kWh battery), and the weight reaches 1450 kg (with the same battery). Technologically advanced, with a retro styling (which happens to be appealing to me), it is still meant to be a "car for the people" and offer the lowest price in its segment. While the outgoing Honda e costs £28,000 in the UK, the Renault 5 is set to start from £25,000. Here's a walkaround of the newcomer by Johnny Smith from The Late Brake Show channel.
Sports tradition will also be honoured, and in June, the sporty version of the "five" – the Alpine A290, will debut. The first Renault with the "Alpine" suffix debuted in 1976, and the "hot" version – the Renault 5 Alpine Turbo – in 1982. They were not as recognizable as the Renault 5 Turbo, but that's precisely the charm of a Q-car, discreet looks with surprising capabilities.
We don't yet know what the modern iteration of the Renault 5 by Alpine will look like or how powerful it will be, but we can take a glimpse at the "beta" version (A290_β), which the manufacturer describes as a "showcar". The February issue of the British Evo has a short column written by Richard Meaden with photos by Aston Parrott. It is bound to be interesting.
Press
In the same issue of Evo, John Barker reviews the second generation of the Toyota GR Yaris. Among the novelties: an option to equip this spectacular car with an eight-speed automatic transmission. Among the surprises: the appearance of the entire dashboard. It's supposedly more ergonomic but looks like it was designed in a Minecraft...
The main theme (though not the cover) of the issue is a test of all the petrol-powered hot hatches available in British showrooms. There are seventeen of them, sometimes double representatives from one manufacturer. The winner is the boomerang-returning – Honda Civic Type R. Returning because the latest generation regularly outclasses all the rivals in its segment and is nipping at the heels of super and hypercars in all polls, summaries, and tests.
It seems that alongside the ICE reality, Honda has a worthy counterpart – Hyundai's Ioniq 5 N. Say what? But how??? After all, Ioniq 5 is a crossover!
Yes, but no.
What exactly do the ideas of this specific car intersect with? Certainly, not those in the AMC Eagle or Subaru Outback – an off-road vehicle with a small passenger car. The term "crossover" is mostly a catch-all that's supposed to make the urban dweller in hiking boots feel better about their outdoor aspirations. Ioniq 5 is no crossover to me, just a scaled-up five-door hatchback. There's nothing wrong with that because the design is widely considered very successful. Its slightly inflated body panels remind me of the VW Golf II, and its proportions almost a perfect-match to those in the Lancia Delta Integrale. Just enlarged by 15% in every direction.
The sporty N version has 650 horsepower, all-wheel drive, and accelerates to 100 km/h in just 3.4 seconds. And it weighs two tons. We have to get used to the fact that new players in the automotive games are moving to the heavyweight class. The earlier-mentioned new Renault 5 is twice as heavy as its prototype!
In this material, you'll see what the Ioniq 5 N ("N" supposedly for Nürburgring) is capable of:
Motorsport
The undisputed kingdom of the fastest hatchbacks is the WRC series. On the list of entries for the 2024 season published by the FIA, there's only one crossover – the Ford Puma. The rest are race cars based on small cars, competing in all classes: Rally 1, Rally 2, and Rally 3. In the first of these, all cars must be equipped with hybrid powertrains, which are supposedly to promote sustainable development in motorsport…
Retro
The most titled car in the history of rally car racing is the Lancia Delta Integrale. It debuted on rally stages in 1987, immediately winning its first world championship thanks to fierce competition from Juha Kankkunen, Miki Biasion, and Markku Alén (1st place in the constructors' classification, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place among the drivers). Last year, the last factory Delta that won a rally in the 1992 season could be bid on via the Collecting Cars platform.
Resto
There's no doubt we're living in very interesting automotive times: we have a rich history, we're witnessing a velvet revolution in powertrains, and those conservative ones powered by dinosaur juice have cosmic performance. Thanks to modern material processing technologies, or 3D printing, incredible things are being created, including "restomods," a mix of restoration with modernization. The most famous ambassador of this philosophy is Porsche's restomoding workshop called Singer, but we won't talk about it today. We'll talk again about the Lancia Delta Integrale and the wonderful project from Automobili Amos – the Futurista. Remodelled, on a carbon-aluminium, three-door wonder, with the engine boosted to over 300 HP, only twenty units were produced. Jeremy Clarkson reviewed it (and the contemporary Stratos) in the twelfth episode of the third season of The Grand Tour.
Podcast
Johnny Smith, mentioned in the first paragraph, has a career spanning several automotive magazines and the television program Fifth Gear. Today, besides his own YouTube channel, he co-creates the excellent "Smith and Sniff" podcast. His co-host is a lad called Richard Porter, whose career started from the Sniff Petrol project, with funny and no-holds-barred texts about cars. Additionally, he is a scriptwriter and wrote some gags for Top Gear, and later for The Grand Tour. Today, he publishes his thoughts in the "Boring Car Trivia" book series. Porter appeared as a supporting driver in the Grand Tour movie "Carnage a Trois," which talked about French motoring. His role was racing against Les Trois Mousquetaires, of course in French hatchbacks. The whole thing was hilariously done, to be watched again on Amazon Prime. Here is a conversation with Porter on The Smoking Tire Podcast:
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Have a good one