Exclusive: The Renault 5 Turbo is set to return as an all-electric model

The Renault 5 Turbo is set to return as a hot all-electric model, Renault Group CEO Luca De Meo has told the The Independent.

“Yeah, that’s the future. I’m trying to find a way,” said the Renault Group CEO, who was speaking at the Paris Motor Show having just shown French president Emmanuel Macron around Renault’s stand where the new Renault 5 EV was being showcased.

De Meo also showed Macron around the Alpine stand at the motor show, where Alpine’s first sporty SUV, the A390 Beta, was revealed for the first time.

The Renault Group is now pushing Alpine as its sporting brand, ditching Renaultsport models within the Renault line-up and even rebranding the Renault Formula One team as Alpine. A hot Alpine version of the new Renault 5, the Alpine A290, goes on sale soon.

However, when asked whether hot Renaults were being sacrificed for Alpine’s benefit, Renault brand CEO Fabrice Cambolive told The Independent “no, we will have sporty Renaults – you will see.”

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A new all-electric Renault 5 Turbo was hinted at with the wild R5 Turbo 3E E-Tech concept shown at last year’s Paris Motor Show in 2023. De Meo’s comments suggest that a limited production run of a car based on that concept is set for the green light.

The Turbo 3E was a 380bhp rear-drive model built to celebrate 40 years of the rally special Renault 5 Turbo 2, this time with electric power. The concept was more than just a show car, and was developed by Renault’s engineering teams to not only resemble the Group B rally cars of the 1980s, but to drive like one too. It even had an upright hydraulic handbrake with a button on top to squirt water on the rear tyres to help the car to drift.

A production version of the concept is likely to be toned down slightly, just as the Renault 5 Turbo 2 was from its rallying siblings. We’d expect it to use plenty of the tech from the new Renault 5, including its AmpR electric platform and possibly the larger of its two batteries at 52kWh.

Reducing weight will be key. Although the bodywork will be beefed up, just as it was on the 5 Turbo 2 and on the Turbo 3E concept, many of the new Renault 5’s luxury features are likely to be stripped out.

Just like the Renault 5 Turbo 2, a new Renault 5 Turbo is likely to be built in limited numbers and at higher prices. Only 3,167 Renault Turbo 2s were ever made.

There’s no word yet on when we might see a new Renault 5 Turbo, but we’d expect the car to break cover some time in 2025.