New Renault 8 Gordini concept is the retro sports car of your dreams
Renault’s new retro-futuristic concept revives a nearly forgotten name from the pages of history
This is the fabulous new Renault 8 Gordini concept: a 21st century reimagining of one of the original sports saloons, which revives the historic name of the French marque’s go-fast arm before it was Renaultsport or Alpine.
Racing driver Amédée Gordini was famous for extracting big power from small engines, earning him the nickname ‘the wizard’. He began producing tuned versions of Renault’s cars in the late fifties, while Renault-Gordini motors took on Le Mans and Formula 1.
Iconic creations followed, including the Renault 5 Gordini that was sold in Britain back in the eighties, but by far the most famous was the 1964 Renault 8 Gordini – a fast French icon and rally legend.
Renault created this new homage as yet another opportunity to remind us of its history and heritage, as well as prove again that it’s the fun one compared with Alpine, which is the most serious and focused.
What does the Renault 8 Gordini look like?
Some 300 design proposals were put forward for the project, with the best eventually whittled down into the show-stopper you see here, which we’re told came together in just two months. Romain Gauvin, head of advanced design and concept cars at Renault, who showed around the car before its world debut, said: “Usually, if I ask the team to work on some boring project, it will take a lot of time. But this one, I don’t know why, but it went very fast.”
The designers had to find the right balance between having enough retro cues to make this car a Renault 8 Gordini, modernising them and giving the concept much more attitude, while also keeping that sense of it being “very approachable, humble, like it’s a car made for everyone. You don't feel that you need a special licence or training to drive this car. You just want to have fun with it”, according to Gauvin.
The French icon's V-shaped prow, quad-headlight arrangement, boxy upright shape and signature double white stripe over brilliant ‘Bleu de France’ blue paint have been carried over. As have its squared-off wheelarch design and the recessed embossing along the waistline, which now leads to an air vent.
But this is not a restomod, so the tiny team of passionate designers started from a blank sheet of paper and went wild, ditching the original's humble four-door bodystyle to create a sportier two-door sedan. The new concept’s classical three-box silhouette evokes memories of the Lancia Fulvia, BMW 2002, Mk1 Ford Escort and Alfa Romeo GT 1300 Junior, among many others from the seventies and eighties.
The designers of the new R8 Gordini wanted to lean into what Gauvin described as “grande folie”, which means ‘big craziness’ in English, for a wild car like this, two-doors was simply much more fitting.
At only 4.12 metres long, the concept is much stubbier than a BMW 2 Series . In fact, it’s not much longer than the car that inspired it, however, the new car is considerably wider and lower, too.
The designers also blessed the reborn R8 Gordini with some big beautiful flared wheelarches, a much bigger staggered set of 19-inch wheels up front and 20 inches at the back, a raked stance and a huge, deep diffuser. The extra spotlights honour the original’s rally success, as well as looking cool, while the F1-style rain light that is a nod to Gordini’s motorsport legacy is one of many Easter eggs sprinkled throughout.
It took a lot of work to get the rear end of the new R8 Gordini to look perfect, Gauvin tells us, because the team drew very little from the original here. In case you’re curious, the tail-lights sit underneath a layer of laser-etched and painted plexiglass, making them invisible when the car is off and looking like they’re projected onto the back of the Renault when on the road.
What does the Renault 8 Gordini look like inside?
Even more stunning than the exterior is the R8 Gordini’s pared back, cafe racer-inspired interior that looks like it belongs in a modern-art gallery. There’s no big touchscreen to distract the driver, just some simple round dials that echo the design of the headlights, laid across a dashboard that’s made from brushed aluminium. The red needle on the stopwatch is one of the few details that sticks out.
“The entire interior and instrument cluster sit beneath a fluid, wraparound beltline, creating a sense of purity and providing the driver with a perfectly unobstructed field of vision,” says Stéphane Maiore, Renault’s interior design director.
There’s no cheap plastic or tacky carbon fibre in this elegant space, simply exquisite materials such as blue corduroy used for the lower half of the dashboard and on the bucket seats. There’s plenty of Alcantara and leather throughout as well, including the three-spoke steering wheel, while all the switchgear on the centre console is also made from brushed aluminium.
While every element of the design and interior has been meticulously crafted, things are a lot fuzzier when it comes to the technical details. We know the new Renault 8 Gordini is all-electric, spitting out 266bhp, all of which is sent to the rear wheels. The 1964 original was also rear-drive and, curiously, rear-engined, producing about 95bhp from a 1.1-litre in-line four-cylinder engine.
Its zero-emissions descendant's battery size or anything else in that department is a mystery for now. We assume it sits on the same all-aluminium architecture developed by Alpine that the 533bhp Renault 5 Turbo 3E hot hatch/drift machine uses. While that would make perfect sense, it hasn’t been confirmed.
Will Renault make a production version?
The only other catch with this jaw-dropping, retro-futuristic creation is that it's a one-off concept, very much not designed for production, and at the time of writing, Renault has no plans to make a road-legal version. But that’s not to say it can’t or won’t, especially if enough people say they would buy one – or register their interest at next month’s Paris Motor Show, where the concept will be on display.
Given how much craftsmanship is present in this concept, the new Renault 8 Gordini would be very pricey indeed, probably even more than the £135,000-plus Renault 5 Turbo 3E.
Although, the French brand has already unlocked a new sense of desirability with its highly exclusive super hatch, and seen what customers are willing to pay, what’s to say Renault won’t do it again.
“Concept cars are extremely useful for a company like us, to be an idea incubator. This is how a lot of ideas come to life,” said Gauvin. “In this case, we are also using concept cars to build brand equity again, so that people don’t just associate Renault with normal, affordable cars.
“It's very important for us to widen the notion of ‘what is Renault?’ and ‘what does Renault stand for?’. This is why we do projects like this one, like Turbo 3E, because we like to keep people entertained and also they never quite know what to expect from us.”
While a new Renault 8 Gordini will remain a dream for now, the similarly retro-inspired Renault 5 is available through the Auto Express Buy a Car service from less than £21,000, or to lease from only £230 per month.
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