ROUGH DIAMOND

Homologation specials were nothing new in 1980, but few had turned a shopping car into such a beast, or transformed it so thoroughly in the process

- James Elliott

There are degrees of homologation special. Many are no more than raw street-legal versions of savage race or rally cars, but there are a few that are so comfortable in their own skin that it feels almost as if the rally car might have been invented solely as an excuse then to create the road car. The Renault 5 Turbo is firmly in the second camp. Sitting in its plush 1970s-style (and coloured) seats, flicking the flimsy stalks straight out of the model that inspired it and gave it two-thirds of its name, and gazing in wonder at (and through) a steering wheel that looks as if it could have come straight out of Logan's Run, the rally stages of Corsica seem a million miles away.

As, it has to be said, does the stock Renault 5. There are similarities, of course, especially if you squint, from a distance, and when you change gear or use those stalks, but, once you have moved both the engine and the driven wheels from the front to the rear, any tenuous visual connection with Michel Boué's original is severed.

Is it even worth mentioning the original 5? Well it did donate the engine. Produced in its millions from 1972 to 1985 (originally, then on well into the 1990s) the Renault 5 was a funky five-seat (at a push) cold-hatch-cum-supermini that was 'a hoot to drive' (Ⓒall motoring journalists ever). It was French, and quirky, archly so, as demonstrated by its being called Le Car in North America and Go in Japan (though the latter was also a smart pun), but slipped seamlessly into Renault's distinguished lineage from Quatrelle to Twingo. Also in Renault's baby people's car tradition there was a bewildering array of variations, not least in an engine bay that started with a mere 782cc and ended with the 1721cc Supercinque. At between 730 and 850kg - aided by the lightweight monocoque and pioneering polyurethane bumpers - not a lot more was needed and it was an extremely accomplished city car.