Renault Clio 1.2 | Shed of the Week
Nicole? Papa? Comment trouves-tu mon cabanon?
Shed was in a right two and eight this week, or perhaps that should be a deux et huit. Why? Well, he loves French classics. The quandary he found himself in was having to choose between two one-owner, low-mile beauties: this 33,000-mile Peugeot 406 from 2001 or a 36,000-mile gen-one Renault Clio from 1997.
As you will see, the Clio got the vote. In the Peugeot’s September MOT and retest, a ‘dangerously corroded rear suspension mounting area’ fail and ‘front and rear underbody suspension components corroded’ advisory both disappeared literally overnight. The repair work that was carried out by fast-moving expert technicians was nicely finished off with ‘UNDERBODY SEALENT APPLIED’. At this point Shed would like to make it abundantly clear that this 406 was most definitely not booked into his drive-thru underseal pit.
Our Clio’s MOT history also has rust on it, but that was back in 2017 when it was spotted on the front subframe and chassis. The car’s one lady owner, who we are told has now given up driving, presumably gave her local guys an open chequebook and instructions to do whatever the Clio needed, whenever it needed it, because the rot was sorted out before the next test and hasn’t reappeared since.
A near-30-year-old red Clio should by now be matte pink with areas of brown and see-through but it’s not. The bumpers have been used for touch parking in the best French tradition but, ignoring the chucked-on Back To Black, it’s in the kind of shape that suggests it was kept in a fur-lined heated garage when it wasn’t being driven, which was most of the time. The average annual mileage of under a thousand slowed even more in the early 2020s to under 500, and then to 300 in the last three years.
Obviously this Renault hasn’t done much continental touring. If it had, it might have visited Versailles, a posh place near Paris, but as things stand the boot badge celebrating this hangout of wig-wearing French royalty is the poshest thing you’ll find on it. 1997 was the last year of the first-generation Clios, making the Versailles a run-out model, but it’s not exactly well equipped with keep-fit windows all round, blank buttons aplenty and a big fuel gauge where you’d expect the tacho to be.
Hair-shirtiness is a big part of the appeal, of course. Rev information was pretty much redundant in a 1.2 Clio. These last gen-one 1.2 Clios had new ‘D’ engines downsized from 1171cc to 1149cc. They were still 8-valvers with a single overhead cam but they had an emissions-conscious sequential multiport fuel injection system instead of the old single-point unit. That hoisted power from 53hp to 57hp at 5,250rpm and torque from 61lb ft to 69lb ft at 2,500rpm, good enough in an 880kg five-door hatch for a 0-62mph time of 15.2 seconds and a top whack 1mph short of the ton. Not exactly getaway car levels of performance, but you could still impress folk by telling them your Clio had a hemi head, which it did.
Talking of head, who can forget Renault’s iconic Clio advertising campaign featuring Nicole and Papa? Not many older PHers, is Shed’s guess. Still on heads, you’d best keep yours down in a frontal impact situation. In one of Euro NCAP’s first crash tests, the Clio scored two out of four, and even that sounds generous when you read that the 64km/h frontal offset test deformed the roof and wrenched the steering column and wheel upward at an angle that encouraged the airbag to fire the driver’s belaboured bonce into the now-buckled A-pillar. Eeeh, great days when men were men and it was advisable to wear a crash helmet while driving along at 40mph.
Let’s forget all that though and concentrate on the running costs, which are a bit more cheery. Because it was first registered before March 2001 this Clio is taxed on its sub-1549cc engine capacity at just £230 a year. Average fuel consumption is in the region of 45mpg and classic insurance should be a few centimes at most. Ideal for beetling about in the exciting run-up to next July’s Festival of the Unexceptional meet, won this year by a VW Polo 1.0 at the brilliantly-named Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire.
Back in period my girlfriend had a base model Renault 5 which was a fantastic car. Drove really nicely, gear change and steering all nicely weighted. Gear ratios well chosen etc. a few years later my dad ended up with a Clio 1.2 as a stop gap car and it was everything the R5 was not. The steering was unnecessarily heavy, the gear changes strangely slow and clunky for a small gearbox, the gearing too tall, the ride too crashy etc. I’m sure the hot ones were great, but the base model just didn’t drive as nicely as its direct predecessor.
I loved it, had a coupe of the 1.2 as loan cars and though they were fine
I went on holiday with my then gf, now wife, back in 94/5 to Portugal, arriving at Faro airport in the late evening and pitch dark.
At the hire car desk we were given the keys to a a black 1.2 clio and told it was in the car park outside
Out we went with a key for a black Clio and a reg number to be met by a huge very poorly lit car park with row upon row of black/dark coloured Clios .. seemed like hundreds of them!
Took about an hour to find our one ... gf really
Not amused and judged by the number of others wandering around trying to find cars I'm sure she wasn't the only one
But it was a good simple car that didn't bing and bong and nanny you like today's ones
The much rarer 110 bhp DCi is still slow so the 90 bhp must be horrendously slow. We've also had a 53 plate 04 Clio 182 which was faultless in the 4 years I owned it. And the wife's
53 plate 1.4 Dynamique.
However great the 3 we've owned have been I certainly don't particularly want this early 1.2 even though my 26 years old daughter is called Nicole & she calls me Dad not Papa ..
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