With its three-cylinder engine mounted in the back sending drive to the rear wheels, the Renault Twingo is a quirky city car. It offers good cabin space and attractive styling, too, but compared to the very best cars in its class, notably the VW up!, it falls short in the fun-to-drive stakes.
This is where the company’s performance division, Renault Sport, comes in. Responsible for such masterpieces as the Megane 275 Trophy-R – one of the most thrilling hot hatches of recent years – Renault Sport has been injecting Renault’s road-going hatchbacks with more performance and sharper dynamics for forty years.
This new Twingo GT is one of the least powerful cars ever to wear the Renault Sport badge on its bootlid, but with 109bhp and just 1,000kg to battle against, it does serve up sprightly performance. It’ll sprint to 62mph in 9.6 seconds and run on to 113mph.
Renault Sport has been to work on the Twingo’s chassis, too, fitting 40 per cent stiffer springs and dampers, lowering the ride height by 20mm and increasing the thickness of the front anti-roll bar. The engineers have also slackened off the electronic stability control by a degree – although it still can’t be switched off – in an effort to make the Twingo GT more fun to drive than the standard models.
Power from the 898cc TCe turbo engine has been increased from 89bhp thanks to revised engine mapping and a new air vent above the left rear wheel that feeds cooler air to the intake. That vent both serves as a neat reminder of where the Twingo’s engine is located as well as setting this GT version apart from the rest of the line-up. The Renault Sport-tweaked model also gets 17-inch wheels, twin exhaust pipes, unique graphics and the option of a bespoke paint colour, Blaze Orange.
The GT is well equipped for a city car, too, boasting automatic climate control, automatic lights and wipers and cruise control as standard.
Despite the promise of Renault Sport’s involvement the Twingo GT is far from exciting to drive. There is some fun to be had in the same way that any small, relatively low-powered car can be entertaining to drive on the open road or in town, but with very remote steering, an engine that labours rather than sings through its rev range and a stability control system that still cuts in far too early, the Twingo GT is ultimately somewhat frustrating to drive.
It may be rear-engined and rear-wheel drive, just like a Porsche 911, but there’s so much safety built into the Twingo GT’s chassis that you could drive it for a year and never be aware of that unusual layout. The real advantage of the rear-mounted engine is a very tight, 8.59-metre turning circle, thanks to the amount of steering angle that can be applied to the front wheels.
The Twingo GT is the fastest and best-looking model in the range, but with a stiffer ride, a steeper asking price and very tame driving dynamics it struggles to make a strong case for itself.
- Model: Renault Twingo GT
- Price: £13,775
- Engine: 0.9-litre 3cyl turbo
- Power: 109bhp
- Transmission: Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
- 0-62mph: 9.6 seconds
- Top speed: 113mph
- Economy/CO2: 54.3mpg/115g/km
- On sale: Now
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