Renault Twingo GT review

by David Finlay (1 February 2008)

Well, things are moving fast in Twingoland right now, and that's a fact. The GT test car arrived in the office car park last week, and before it was taken away again Renault had announced the arrival of a new entry-level model in the range, curiously named the Extreme (as in extremely cheap, I suppose). Then, a matter of hours ago, came news of a high-performance model, the Twingo Renaultsport. A few more weeks of this and the whole business will be taking on the aspect of a plague.

At the precise moment of writing this, however (and I'll let you know if anything changes in the time it takes to write the rest of this article), this here GT is the fastest Twingo you can buy. All Twingos currently on sale in the UK, but not the forthcoming Renaultsport version, use variants of a 1.2-litre petrol engine which in standard form produces 74bhp. With various modifications, which include replacing 30% of the parts and fitting a turbocharger, the unit in the GT produces 99bhp.

Renault describes the turbo as having "low inertia", which basically means that it's quite small. The great advantage of this is that it takes very little time to spin up to a speed at which it can do its job. The delay between you asking for power and the engine providing it - famously known as turbo lag - is therefore minute, and if I'm being honest I'd have to say that I wasn't aware of it when driving the car.

If I'm really honest I should add that the engine in the GT didn't feel turbocharged at all, and that I had to check that it actually was. Turbo technology has improved massively over the years, but no engine I know of uses it quite so subtly as this one.

On paper - or, rather, in the official EU fuel economy test - the GT drinks petrol at about the same rate as its stablemates. Its combined figure of 47.8mpg is just 1.7mpg short of that achieved by the naturally-aspirated Dynamique, and 2.6mpg away from that of the Extreme. This is good news for tax purposes, as the CO2 figures are similarly close and all three are subject to the same amount of road duty (VED Band C), but bear in mind that the turbo will hardly, if ever, have been required during the test. If you use the GT's performance, you'll go through fuel at a much greater rate than could possibly be the case in the lesser cars.

That performance is more than adequate - 0-62mph in 9.8 seconds and a top speed of 117mph are more than respectable for a 100bhp warm hatchlet - and the power delivery, as noted previously, is exceptionally smooth.

But neither of these things explains why I believe the Twingo GT to be at the top of its class in terms of driving experience.

No, the reason for that is the way it handles. In nearly all circumstances the GT is a delight to drive. It's particularly user-friendly in town, and would therefore be ideal for learners or people with more experience but no more confidence, and it's also tremendous fun on twisty country roads. Turn-in is smooth but definite, and the balance is excellent - there's no sense that the back end wants to break away, but it's lively enough to follow the front willingly through bends.

I wouldn't recommend the GT highly for long journeys, though, especially if you're likely to encounter a lot of bumpy tarmac. This is the one situation which betrays the difficulty of making something sporty of a car which is both short and tall. The suspension can't quite deal with it, and on several types of road it creates an uncomfortable jiggling effect.

Apart from that, full marks. The GT could not of course keep up with any of the various Clio Renaultsport models, some of which have nearly twice its power, but it has clearly been set up according to the same principles, and for extended use it might turn out to be more enjoyable.

One aspect of the Twingo which will be either a selling-point or a turn-off, according to personal taste, is its appearance. It's not as cute as its predecessor, which was never officially imported into the UK, nor the more obviously cuddly Fiat 500, but at the same time it looks better in real life than it does in photos, particularly in the red paint scheme shown here (I'm not so sure about some of the other colours Renault has chosen).

The slight wackiness of the exterior continues inside. The instrument display is unconventional, though not completely original, with a revcounter standing on its own right in front of the steering wheel and everything else in the centre of the dashboard.

Sometimes this arrangement works and sometimes it doesn't. Here it does, partly because the circular display containing the speedometer, the fuel gauge and a few lights is larger than the revcounter as well as being further away. From the driver's seat they both appear to be the same size, which is surprisingly relaxing. If this is a deliberate design feature, it's a very clever one.

Also clever is the rear-seat arrangement. There are actually two seats back there, and each of them can be moved backwards or forwards as well as folded. In the furthest-back position there's enough room for me, at six foot three, to be able to sit behind myself and not complain about legroom (though headroom isn't nearly so generous). Move the seats forward and you increase the luggage volume from a niggardly 230 litres to something a lot more practical.

Open the tailgate and there doesn't seem to be a luggage cover, but in fact it's above you, attached to the tailgate itself. A nice touch, which makes the process of loading the car that bit less fiddly. Unfortunately the cover isn't extendable, so if you have the rear seats forward to create more room it will be possible for unsavoury fellows to see what's in there while the car is parked.

Euro NCAP has given the Twingo a four-star rating for adult occupant protection, though Renault, with its history of exceptionally good results in crash tests, must be spitting nails at the fact that the rival Fiat 500 was the first car of comparable size to be given five stars.

One more positive safety feature, though, is that the Twingo's all-round visibility, while not quite as good as it might be, is vastly better than that of most small hatchbacks, so you're unlikely to bump into anything during complex manoeuvres. That's another in the long list of reasons to consider buying a quite remarkably appealing little car.

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