Production Renault 5 Turbo 3E nears finish line
Latest preview of 555hp EV was overshadowed by the A310 Vision at Paris - but the two are inextricably linked
Is any car firm currently enjoying itself as much as Renault? Practically everything it launches seems to not only resonate with its existing fans, but also a much wider audience - one presumably so starved of imaginative and affordable fun-first cars that the brand's unabashed jaunt down memory lane must look just like what the doctor ordered. Which is doubly impressive when you consider that Renault is adamant about its place at the vanguard of Europe’s transition to electric power, and is only really comfortable talking about petrol engines if they’re utilised as range extenders. Imagine a German carmaker trying that in 2026.
Of course, it helps that the Renault Group counts Dacia among its constituent brands - a manufacturer that continues to make hay with combustion, and can apparently do no wrong - and has an appreciative partner in Geely. It also has Alpine, where it can dabble with beating Porsche at its own game. Or at the very least, measuring itself against Porsche; a benchmark so far beyond any other French carmaker that it might as well be the dark side of the moon. Consider: the outgoing A110 was every bit as lovely to drive as a 718 Cayman. Its maker will aim to go one better with that car’s battery-powered replacement.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t far-reaching issues - no European carmaker is without those. Renault’s straight-shooting CEO, François Provost, a blockbuster replacement for Luca de Meo last year, concedes that his core brand must do better with larger models (where there are fewer opportunities to lean into its heritage - aside, perhaps, for the E-Space concept it showed at Paris), and Alpine’s attempt to cast its net a little wider has not exactly set the world alight. First-hand experience tells us the A390 is a perfectly adequate upmarket crossover - but historically speaking, ‘perfectly adequate’ has rarely been sufficient to persuade people from whichever premium brand they usually prefer.
Speaking to UK journalists at the show, Provost declared himself blithely unconcerned by the model’s sales performance, suggesting Alpine is on a 20-year journey, and simply nurturing the DNA is sufficient for the brand to be doing its thing. More pertinent to its immediate future, he suggested, was convincing its customers that ‘sporty electric’ cars were actually going to be an appealing prospect. Clearly, the new A110 will be expected to carry the can when it eventually launches, though it says much about Renault’s direction of travel that before it even got around to introducing a (very recognisable) replacement for its established sports car, it knocked everyone’s socks off with the R5 Turbo 3E.
Provost is unrepentant about baiting the marketing hook with an EV that owes its core identity to a rear-engined homologation special from half a century ago. “For me it’s a very meaningful project,” he told PH. “We should not underestimate the importance of the emotional value. When I listen to some people say that ‘oh, the young people in Europe, they don’t care about cars’ - well, this is shit.” Renault’s boss is adamant that the continent’s fundamental interest in ‘buying a nice car’ hasn’t decreased at all, and that ‘showing off your ambition’ was a crucial part of appealing to a new audience.
The 3E has certainly delivered that. Strictly speaking, the model remains in development - particularly with regard to its final homologation - though it attended the Paris show in previously unseen paint schemes to signify its journey toward its customisation programme. For buyers who want to take advantage of the full tailor-made configuration (and honestly, who wouldn’t?), this is due to kick off in mid-2027 ahead of first deliveries the following year. Florent Ingargiola, the 3E's Product Leader, admitted to PH that, as with much else about the 555hp rear-drive EV, even this had been a learning process for the manufacturer, as it dealt with the understandably loftier expectations of people parting with at least 160,000 euros for the pleasure of becoming a Renault owner.
On one hand, this has involved an inevitably deeper dive into the world of personalisation, where the sheer number of options being made available in terms of trim materials and paint finishes, meant that the project required significantly larger design teams. On the other, it has felt it necessary to invest in two entirely new venues to receive the 3E buyers (one on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, one on the outskirts of Paris), with the intention of mirroring the kind of customer experience they might previously have had with a traditional supercar maker.
While both are time-consuming and resource-intensive, the results are likely to speak for themselves. Ingargiola noted the unusual level of influence initial buyers had when it came to refining the car’s spec, as Renault gathered the kind of individual feedback that would obviously be impossible in a mainstream model. It is precisely this kind of buying journey, and the one-to-one relationships forged between manufacturer and well-heeled clients, that are heavily prioritised by the likes of Bentley and Aston Martin - not least because it is a proven way of retaining exceptional customer loyalty.
Provost bats away the suggestion that Renault aspires to such exalted company - he is unafraid to admit that the 3E part owes its existence to an underlying desire for proof of concept when it came to validating the car’s in-wheel electric motors, a technology evidently under consideration for future use elsewhere - but when he points out that some customer versions of the car are expected to retail ‘above 350,000 euros’, his assertion that “Renault can sell some kind of supercar” has plainly already come true.
Additionally, one suspects that the 3E’s comparatively slow gestation and gradual accumulation of interested parties - Ingargiola confirms that Renault has now booked more than half of the 1,980-example production run - has contributed to the “lot of other ideas” that Provost admits are now floating around when it comes to future outlets for the firm’s newly invigorated, special project energy. Conveniently, one such potential avenue had been revealed on the Paris show floor barely four hours earlier.
“[The Alpine A310 Vision] concept is doable on the new APP platform, so to do a kind of hyper-personalised supercar - and again, we are humble; I’m not saying we become Ferrari - but this I think is accessible to Renault and we can create a halo that is consistent with our brand and our core business,” he mused. Not so very long ago, reeling under the weight of mediocre cars it could not sell and muddled strategic partnerships it could arguably do without, such a dramatic looking, technologically advanced halo would have seemed about as appropriate as a diamond tiara on a French Bulldog. Now, with more than a thousand willing souls to sound out, it seems like an entirely reasonable entree to the 3E’s amuse-bouche.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff