Renault 5 Turbo 3E is a supercar disguised as a hatchback

Step into the carbon fibre passenger seat of the new Renault 5 Turbo 3E. Ignore the wonderfully retro dashboard graphics and the rally-style handbrake sprouting from the centre console, and look into your footwell. Here you’ll see the message accroche toi!, which is French for ‘hang on!’.

This sets the tone for what’s to come next, and reminds us that, every so often, Renault likes to let its hair down and produce something so wonderfully deranged that it appears to have drifted straight out of a video game.

The Turbo 3E’s closest relatives are of course the first and second generations of Turbo 5, which demonstrated back in the 1980s how the otherwise-sensible French can turn a humble city-dwelling hatchback into a flame-spitting race and rally car.

Between then and now the company’s Renault Sport division gave us two generations of the equally mad, bad and mid-engined V6 Clio, the Lotus Elise-baiting Spider, some of the world’s greatest hot hatches in various forms of Clio and Megane and, just for laughs, an Espace people-carrier powered by a Formula One engine.

Now it has the 5 Turbo 3E, a car Renault itself describes as a beast. The design alone would justify this, but under the carbon skin you’ll find a pair of in-hub electric motors producing a combined 540 horsepower – that’s 3.3 times more than the original 5 Turbo, pictured below. There’s also a new, 800-volt electrical architecture that helps the 70 kWh battery charge at up to 350 kW, enough to complete a top-up from 15 to 85 percent in 15 minutes.

Renault says the rear-wheel-drive pocket rocket will launch to 62 mph (100 km/h) in under 3.5 seconds, 105 mph (170 km/h) in less than nine seconds, and has a top speed of 167 mph. It is said to weigh 1,450 kg (not bad at all for an EV) and while being just 4.08 metres long, it’s a stocky 2.03 m wide, giving it length of a supermini but the width of a supercar. Width-restricted London roads be damned.

Range is a claimed 248 miles, but the emphasis here is on short bursts of driving enjoyment, on track or your favourite back road, not day-long motorway slogs. Result suggests owners could thrash their 5 Turbo 3E around a track for 20 minutes, then charge the battery for 20 minutes and go again.

Renault says it’ll build 1,980 examples – a nod to the year the original 5 Turbo landed – and the car will be available in the UK, US, Europe and other markets where Renault Sport products have been successful, including Japan, Australia and the Middle East. Right- and left-hand-drive are both available, but Renault hasn’t said how many will be offered in each market.

Interested buyers will want to call their local dealer ASAP to secure an allocation ahead of production and deliveries kicking off in 2027.

What’s an in-wheel motor?

Behind the bulging bodywork is a key piece of EV tech we’ve yet to see on any mass-produced electric car: in-wheel motors.

Also described as hub motors, these live just inboard of the wheel itself and drive it directly, instead of via a half shaft from the centre of the axle. Renault says a major benefit is packaging, since the motors rob less space from the interior volume of the car, resulting in better boot capacity than if a powerful, 400 kW motor was installed centrally at the rear of the car.

The company also claims less torque is lost, since it doesn’t have to first rotate a shaft before it reaches the wheel, and the location of the motors lowers the centre of gravity. It’s also convenient that the original 5 Turbo had cartoonishly flared rear wheel arches, which when fitted to the new car give plenty of room for the motors without compromising the boot.

Renault also says the in-wheel motors save weight compared to a conventional motor, and agility is enhanced since each motor can be individually controlled, creating true torque vectoring across the rear axle. This can help shuffle power between the two driven wheels, but also potentially slow an inside wheel, via regenerative braking, to help the car turn more eagerly into a corner.

As well as regeneration, in-wheel motors have physical disc brakes. These are typically fitted to the inboard side of the motor, furthest from the outer edge of the wheel and tyre, and are slowed by a calliper on the inside of the disc.

Renault won’t yet say who is supplying its in-wheel motors, but several companies have such a product in development, including Donut Lab and Bedeo.

Last year I drove a classic Land Rover Defender that had been converted to electric with a set of in-wheel motors from UK-based Bedeo, which offers them as a retrofit solution for owners who want to electrify their old car. The car drove exactly like any other electrified classic, and unless you peered through the wheels you wouldn’t know where the motors were located.

In this case, the benefits of in-wheel motors are more closely linked to packaging and ease-of-fitment than drastic changes to how the car drives.

Fully customisable, in and out

Renault says the 5 Turbo 3E will be available with many customisation options for the exterior and interior. These include paint colours and liveries inspired by classic race and rally Turbo 5s of old (pictured below), such as the yellow, white and black of the Group B rally car from 1982.

Inside, the seats, dashboard, door panels and centre console are among parts that can be customised. The steering wheel features the same blue brake regeneration switch and red overtake trigger as the Alpine A290, which in turn are inspired by the Renault sibling’s Formula One car. There’s also a wheel-mounted button for switching between the four drive modes, called Snow, Regular, Sport and Race. The latter includes a drift-assist function, which I fully expect to bonfire the rear tyres on demand.

The rest of the interior is dominated by a pair of carbon bucket seats (the 5 Turbo 3E is strictly a two-door, two-seater), and a vertically-mounted handbrake like that from a rally car.

Owners of the standard Renault 5 E-Tech will recognise the dashboard, with its 10.1-inch driver display and 10.25-inch infotainment touchscreen. The former is still a digital screen but features a wonderfully retro set of analogue dials and gauges like those of the original 5 Turbo, while the infotainment system has Google Assistant, Google Maps and the Play store built in. If it works like the regular 5’s, it’ll be a joy to use.

Renault 5 Turbo 3E price and availability

Renault isn’t confirming the price just yet, but given the carbon body, 800-volt electrics and those trick in-wheel motors, buyers should brace themselves for a six-figure outlay.

I suspect it’ll land at around £125,000, plus optional extras like custom race liveries. The company says it will produce 1,980 examples, each individually numbered. A reservations system will open in the coming weeks and the first deliveries are expected to happen in the first half of 2027.