Big price cut for no-nonsense, practical electric crossover brings its numerous qualities into even sharper focus
Renault’s daring decision to reinvent the famous 5 and bust one of car design’s fundamental rules – ‘never regurgitate your history’ – appears to have been a masterstroke. The new electric Renault 5 oozes character inside and out, it handles smartly and it’s ultra-competitive on cost. It’s now the clear leader in a congested class.The strategists at Renault HQ in Boulogne-Billancourt will be doubly delighted because they’ve had the chance to repeat the trick with another back-catalogue icon: the Renault 4, or simply ‘R4’.You will know the source material. More than eight million 4s were sold between 1961 and 1994, with production in places ranging from Wexford in Ireland to Antananarivo in Madagascar, where, brilliantly, the little French station wagon remains the taxi du jour.Where the original 5 was more about fun, the 4 was about practicality. It offered surprisingly good ride comfort on France’s war-torn country roads, as well as total utility. The need to maximise interior space is why the original 4 has a different wheelbase on each side; one of the semi-trailing arms on the rear suspension is mounted just ahead of the other, to prevent the mechanicals encroaching on cabin space. For the same reason, the gearbox is mounted directly ahead of the engine: no awkward transmission tunnel. The big boot opening also extends to the very base of the bumper.The reinvented 4 isn’t quite so extreme in its pursuit of utility; it doesn’t quite match the original’s 22cm or so of fairly unregulated suspension travel (neither, frankly, would we want it to); and at launch in 2025, its £27k-or-more pricing wasn’t quite rock-bottom; but its qualification for the top-bracket £3750 Electric Car Grant from the UK government has quickly addressed that. The 4 does, then, recapture to a fair extent the philosophy of its progenitor and is meaningfully different from the new 5, with which it shares a platform and nearly everything else. Is it similarly lovable? Let’s find out.
