The Renault 5 was a triumph. The Renault 5 is a triumph.
The biggest selling French car at its peak, with just south of 10 million units shifted, returned in 2021 after a year-old drawing from the design studio was given the green light by then-new and now-just-departed boss Luca de Meo.
What followed when it officially hit the road in January 2025 was lavish praise, five-star reviews and a good few car of the year awards to boot. It is the Car of the Year, the one that gets the little gold sticker in the rear window.
And with it, Renault became the first brand since FIAT in 1996 to retain the Car of the Year title.
You can expect the Renault 5 to be the poster car of the Reboots & Restomods at the Scramble on Sunday 5 October, with a new and original side by side.
It is a reboot in the archetypal sense, like the Beetle and the MINI and the FIAT 500, with retro design cues brought to up to modern standard. But they could only dream of the reception the R5 has received.
The original car, still a beaten-up sight on any Parisian street, was revealed in late 1971 but launched to its home market in 1972. It landed in the UK 12 months later.
It was surprisingly spacious and nice to drive, but few would have expected the hot versions that were less than a decade in the future. They were hinted at when Alpine fettled a 5, but the Turbo and Turbo 2 of the Group B era was a wild world away. Meanwhile the later GT, much closer to the standard model but for a kit and a few more horsepower, brought performance to the masses and took the fight to the VW Golf GTI.
The Clio saw it off into the archives and only harked back to the 5 when Renault revived the Campus name as an entry-level run-out model in 2006.
Today the R5 is an EV, with a sporting variant reworked and rebranded as an Alpine. A reboot in every sense.
Reboots & Restomods is the central display to to the sold-out Scramble on Sunday 5 October.