Five!

"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse) 02/05/2019 at 17:20 • Filed to: Renault 5

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Today ’s the fifth so let’s have a 5.

This one. It’s from Italy.

This one’s special. It’s got one of those fancy automatic gearbox thingies and is a model all to itself, distinguishable by the vinyl roof. At one time it reached 5% of 5 sales.

The 5 was sold to the Americans who didn’t get to call it a 5. Instead it was called a The Bus. No, I haven’t a clue.

If you didn’t want a The Bus or a sluggish automatic y ou could have had an Alpine. It had a turbo. Fancy.

Then again, you could have had an actual Turbo, and good luck finding an affordable one now. This had an engine and its attached turbo just where you would usually expect to find the rear seats so maybe less useful than you would expect. L ugg age space suffered (and got quite hot) too. It had 160 bhp, quite a lot for the time in a car this size.

not for canada - australian in disguise > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 17:40

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Fun fact: When AMC imported the 5 to Canada, they decided not to call it the Le Car like they did in the States. Probably because the Quebec market would think it’s a stupid and ridiculous name.

Except I might be completely wrong as I’m not finding brochures and ads using the Le Car name as well. So who the hell knows. The later 80s models were known as the 5, and so were the early models, so the Le Car name in Canada was probably confined to the late-ish 70s.

punkgoose17 > not for canada - australian in disguise 02/05/2019 at 17:53

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In the U.S.A.  we also found “Le Car” to be a stupid name worthy of ridicule. That is the reputation I learned. I was born after Renault left the U.S.

dogisbadob > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 18:38

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Here’s a 5

RacinBob > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 20:05

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My Le Car racing history. After my 1st year of showroom stock racing my ‘80 Rabbit, my buddy Tom and I bought the red Renault used and worn out that I had found on the hotline at work . I installed my bolt in roll bar and belts from the rabbit and we had a race car. So we and out with our other local racing buddies had a racing team with big plans in the annual Lake Phalen Winterfest enduro race.

After a 3 hour drive to Minneapolis and a overnight stay, we took off on the first practice. Tom drove into a snow cloud a fter 10 minutes on the track and discovered a RX7 stuck on a snow berm blocking the track and leaving him no place go.

Our Le Car front end nicely wrapped around the rear bumper of an RX 7. Between the front end rust and plastic, we were done and the RX7 had hardly a scratch.

So we pulled the cage, the belts, sold it for $100 and hitched a ride with another team back home. It was a short lived car but I really liked it. It had a neat mechanical feel and the open carb had a happy cackle. Easy come, easy go.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 20:06

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Here’s a 5-2

ranwhenparked > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 20:12

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Obligatory.

Nauraushaun > Cé hé sin 02/05/2019 at 21:08

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Le Car is one of those things that reminds you how American Americans can be. Man, it rustles my jimmies