IDRIVEACLASSIC reviews: Renault Super Cinq (Renault 5 - Le Car)

i am so excited to announce that idrava classic is now sponsored by adrian flux one of the uk's leading classic car insurers if you're looking for classic car insurance i've popped a link to adrian flux in the description box below hi guys it's steph from idrama classic and today i'm back with something behind these shutters that i know you're gonna love so we've got these shutters up it's the amazing renault five campus i've been really excited to show you this for a little while my friend sam bought the car and he said steph you've got to come and see it it's really really clean it's really nice and first of all it's now come up for sale so i thought before it sells let's go and review it and find out what a renault five's like because i've never driven one and i'm sure there's plenty of you at home that despite five and a half million of these cars being sold have probably never tried one as well so i'm gonna bring it to the channel today i'm really excited to show you it but first of all let's kick off with a tour round the outside of the car renault 5 renault sunk or if you're an american probably going to call it la car although this example here today is not actually a renault 5 it's actually the super fives that's what followed on or if you're in france you may notice the super sunk now these were sometimes known second generation and some people see it's a completely different car they're made from 1984 through to 1997. now across the lifespan of the five and the super five over 5.5 million of these little super minis were made so it's like a car no other really and therefore it's no wonder when i posted a picture on facebook twitter and instagram many of you told me stories of first cars moms around town run about and examples that you fondly remember from your own childhood and some of you adults as well now although it was the best-selling car in france from 1972 through to 1986 it wasn't a rarity at time of production in the uk either and seen one on your street or in the supermarket car park wasn't a surprise however it's fast becoming a lesser spotted beast on the roads of great britain so before the prices shoot up and they all disappear into the hands of private collectors and dealers and sunday drivers i wanted to show you an affordable retro runabout so i have already mentioned this is for sale if you want to get in touch with the seller drop me an email my email address is in the video description below now of course the super 5 wouldn't exist without the 5. so i thought i'd give you a bit of history on the 5 before leading into super 5 to set out the scene for our drive today now for me the most wonderful thing about the original renault five is it was complete accident and simply came around by chance and genius of one man so the man's name was michelle bowie he was only 36 at the time which is insane because you always think of car designers you always think they must have a massive lineage behind them but boy was only 36 and in fact i'll tell you why it was a surprise because he had he had a renault four on his table and he was sketching over it merely for fun just a doodle to see what could be achieved with a new model but his bosses walked past him and they saw it done now instead of consigning it to the waste paper bin they thought actually that's really clever and they took it a little bit further so within two days it went from being his doodle on a bit of paper to actually being a model so they had it all made up and from there everything wildly slotted into place from beret's front and rear bumpers that were smoothly integrated being reimagined as core fiberglass bumpers and allowing for risks like a two-door car in a traditionally four-door market they really did take some risks and take on his ideas and run with them now another thing that i thought was very interesting about the renault 5 was it considered two driver audiences who were fast gaining market share and buying power which were the female driver and the younger driver the planning chief bernard hannon who by the way you will hear later on in the story to remember that name felt this was a big plus point for the car rather than afterthought in a world where manufacturers and you watch any car advert or you look at any literature from the time women and younger drivers weren't always massively thought about so all in all it was a pretty daring move for renault and of course this was the era of the super mini and the manufacturer was determined to move with the times and before the fives the renault would support renault it supported the small car market with the renault 4 and the renault 6. so the 5 brought something new to the table in a really refreshing way now there is something sad about this story because i would love to tell you that bowie went on to design other wonderful cars because surely genius like that wasn't wasted but however the biggest tragedy of this success story is he died a year before the car was launched so whilst his genius changed motoring he never actually witnessed any of the success of it and what success it was because it initially went on sale in march 1972 and was available in the l which had the 782 cc from the renault 4 and the tl which had the 956cc as used in the renault 8. but by october of that year so not even a full year it was the best-selling car in france which meant that then it was sold over in the uk and it gave bemused by something very different to the homegrown choices so for somebody wanting a smaller car they might have automatically looked at something like the mini or the imp but both those have been on sale for a while so this brought real fresh appeal to the super mini market and with it being such a popular car not just in france but really every country it's sold into it gave the team at renault real power to keep investing and diversifying so by 74 there was a new engine and the introduction of the renault 7 which is essentially a bit of a booted five um and they also got the ability to bring in new trims and specs to draw more buyers and so it's a bit of a snowball effect because by that point you've got more buyers more investment so in 76 you see an economy model added which really does make sense because of course we had the oil crisis in 73 and 74. and then in 78 you get the automatic transmission unit and of course everybody's favorite the renault 5 turbo and it's also the year that the work begins on the 140 project which gives us the renault super 5 that we see here today now when it was sold it was sold onto the strap line as more than the five and the now chairman of renault a name we've already heard in this story bernard hannon calls upon marcelo gandini who you might know about if you know anything about lamborghini so he's brought on to modernize the five for a new decade so it's a new body with the same profile and the engine is now transverse something which was borrowed from the nine and the eleven now the new card came up against competition from the 205 and to some extent the golf both of which had come to market during the lifespan of the original renault 5. now whilst the 205 is always remembered really fondly it is actually worth noting that the five always outsold the 205 and until 1989 continued to get investment in the super 5 range with new trims and specs in 1990 the clio came to market and sales of the super five slowly trailed off and production ended in france in 1997. i've shared a bit a bit of history there for you on the five and super five and the evolution of it all so let's hop inside and have a look at the dash because i don't think you're going to be disappointed [Music] now i won't lie to you when i got given the keys to sereno5 i assumed it was probably going to be a little bit tinny inside but hopping in i've been well shocked to be honest because the quality of the plastics used and the quality of the material on the seats is far better than some of the other smaller cars so whilst this is on nearly 70 000 miles on the clock it still holds its own against cars that are maybe only 10 years old it's in exceptional condition so it's only have three owners from you which i do think in part that's probably why it's so nice because people obviously had it for a while and looked after it but i wanted to show you what it's like inside because if like me you've never actually seen one of these up close it's quite interesting to have a look at so first of all we don't have a traditional glove box so over on our left hand side we've got a giant pocket but then when we come inside this almost ski slope-esque center center console this center bit lifts up and of according to the owner's handbook that's your glove box and above that you've got two just empty they're almost what would i compare it to size wise they're like the width of two cigarette packets high they're very small i'm not really sure what you'd put inside them so again that seems like a bit of a waste of space where we could have had something else um coming down we've got these two buttons and that is something i like on this is that it's got these really attractive buttons in that it all just feels like it flows together really naturally through the dash coming down into this unit here which is just our heat control now this is a little hole now i assume that it must have been looking at the shape of it that must have been a clock on some of the best-suspect additions and as we come down we've got an ashtray all self-respecting french cars have a d-pass strain and we come down into a replacement stereo so this one is the cd player would like to the cassette player but it's not my car to make that decision now coming in front of us everything is it again very well laid out looking at the dash in front of us we've got our speedo running from zero to a rather optimistic 120 miles per hour we've got our indicator lights in the middle over to the right hand side is our fuel gauge and we've got a selection of warning lights there including a warning light to your lights on now this might not seem like a really big thing but there's quite a few of the super minis that don't have it so it's quite nice to see on this coming over to our right we've got our rear windscreen demis and we've also got our fog lights there as well leading down into the windscreen wipers now these are twin speed um and it may seem like it's a really strange placement for that but actually when you're driving it feels very natural to reach for that so it looks a bit strange on the layout but when you're driving it just feels very natural to our right hand side there now this is french ingenuity something that i love about french cars is you always get in one especially from this area and there's something you find and you think that's a really good idea why is that not a bigger thing elsewhere and for me it's this so it turns and you can see you've got your side lights your full lights your indicators there and you've got your horn there as well and then one last thing i'm going to show you and then we're going to get i'm going to show you the gearbox i'm going to start it up is the choke so i found this really weird it's just down here and it's almost like a tab that you pull up um so for ages i was looking for this elusive uh elusive choke i thought where is it and it's just down there which very very strange anyway that's a bit of a that's a bit of a quick whistle stop tour what we've got in here as you can see it's all very attractively laid out it's a nice car in my opinion it's a great example and i'm very excited to take you out on it because it drives really well so gearbox startup and then we're heading off out now i just wanted to show you this gearbox before we head off so we have got four gears and you know what it changes gear so smoothly so whilst 80s cars aren't necessarily for me by the way to get into reverse we just need to pop that up they always change gear so nicely so there we go back into neutral i'm gonna start this car now for you and we'll head off so of course we've got that 1.1 under the bonnet i'm not expecting speedy gonzales but hopefully we will get a nippy little run around today so i don't know if you can hear that at home but it's so quiet so much quieter than i was expecting actually it's really it's really pleasant and as you'll see when we go for a drive it's really quiet there as well so before we go for a drive i'm just going to head to the back show what she sounds like from the exhaust and then uh i'm going to take a little adventure around west yorkshire right it's time to head off we are going to see what this car can do albeit with the speed cameras considered this car goes up through the gears really quickly because even at 30 miles an hour there we're straight up into fourth gear now i've got a car coming up to the channel i'm going to tell you a little bit about i'm not going to tell you what it is but i took it out and i absolutely hated driving it most stressful thing that i've driven in months and one of the joys sometimes of taking cards out on tests is that you find a car which fits to you like your favorite pair of shoes and i guess this is how i would describe this renai five because i've never driven one never been a passenger in one in fact i haven't seen one in the flesh since well taking car shows out the equation years probably university um well certainly in this country anyway and so really it's the car that saluted me so i didn't realize the value of the car itself until i got into it today and realized it's potentially one of the easiest things i've ever driven now it does have its drawbacks and it does have its plus points and i'm going to try and give them both a fair airing so that you can make a decision at home whether this is a car that you'd like to add to your dream car garage or one that you'd leave on the forecourt so number one is is the visibility is absolutely unrivaled it's brilliant because of course you're in that era of well safety isn't your first consideration so you've got plenty of visibility all around you the seating position is nice and high up and i don't know i feel more confident driving this than anything i've taken on test for months it's just the nicest thing now changing gear and the gearbox is pretty smooth as well not the smoothest of the hot hatches i've taken out but it's smooth enough and i think it's just so straightforward to drive you know like you've got a synchro on all the gears you've got discs to the front so you know you're not having to grapple with those endless drum breaks that need adjusting and it's an attractive little car as well so those are the plus points really along with the fact that and again this is very much my personal opinion i like the dash layout in this far more than some of the other hot hatches and smaller cars that we've taken out and in fact this is more comfortable to drive than the mini honestly that that is how much of an accolade i'll give it it's a lovely car to drive but it's not all plain sailings there's a few bits about it that i don't like so whilst the seating position is fantastic if i'm being truly honest the seats aren't that comfortable so it's great for round town driving like we're doing today and we're taking it out on test but how do i fancy my chances after some of the drives that i do in the marina where i'm going to 300 miles i think i might actually have back pain whereas the metro seats are far more comfortable the peugeot seats were far more comfortable so yes it's a great seating position but seeds just aren't comfortable now the thing that really kind of gets me and i'm not sure i'm completely 100 comfortable with is the steering so whilst we're driving like this around town it's lovely and light and everything's very simple when i came to a stop earlier and i had to maneuver into a space it started to feel quite heavy and sluggish well certainly for the size of the car and i thought oh you know that's a bit of a that's a bit of a minus point against some of the other cars now i think that people as well always think that cars like this are pretty tinny but as you know when we took out that 205 we were talking about the quality of it which you know what i think the quality as well is quite high in these they weren't exactly you know top of the range car for a rich person they were just you know fog standard super mini car something that everybody could aspire to but despite that the quality and the finish on this is incredible and to say that this car is well older than me um well i'll tell you what it's in far better nick far far better nick now despite the fact that i find the steering a bit heavy and these seats a little bit uncomfortable it is a cracking proposition and best of all is plenty of people always watch this channel and say to me and it's the question that i get most for is steph if you had to pick a car like a budget classic like a modern one or an older one what would you pick i never before have i recommended the renault five purely because i would always say i've got no experience i don't know what it's like to drive you don't know it's like handling but i take it all back because if i'm being completely honest with you all at home this is definitely up there in my top five car recommendations for you it's relatively quiet inside it's not bad at all the suspension is average you've got decent fuel consumption it does everything that you would like a little retro run about to do and i think it's close enough to a modern car that if you are a younger person who's learned to drive in a modern car you'll be absolutely fine in adapting to this it's honestly the easiest thing to drive and it's so delightful to see as well because there's so few about that as we've been driving around today people have been smiling and waving and you get the super mini experience without the super me price tag because you can pick up examples of these so you can pick up a really nice if you're not too bothered about having you know the sportiest example available you can pick up a really nice example like this well this one is 1 800 i think um but you know you can pick up projects for under a thousand pounds so it's a car which i think was accessible to everybody at the time and i think it's lovely because it's still accessible now so it's been quite fun today showing you this red-05 i didn't know what to expect um i really hope you've enjoyed the video it certainly put a smile on my face doing it and yet again i get to bring you something exciting french and lesser spotted so if you aren't following me on social media already don't forget i'm on twitter facebook instagram just send i drive a classic we can connect up on there and you can see all the adventures i get up to between videos now i'm going to head off back to sam's and reluctantly give back these keys so all it leaves me to say is take care and drive safely

Channel: idriveaclassic

Views: 14,048

Rating: 4.9552574 out of 5

Keywords: renault 5 review, renault five review, Renault super five review, renault super cinq review, renault 5 road test, renault five road test, renault super five road test, renault super cinq, renault superfive, renault super five, supercinq, retro renault, voiture classique, voiture ancienne, 80s renault, super mini review, budget classic car, cheap 80s classic car, renault 5 turbo, renault 5 campus, renault super 5 campus, gordini, driving a renault 5, cult classic car

Id: lpMCSg44XUo

Length: 20min 50sec (1250 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021