Hark, an email arrives from Renault’s UK spin doctor. I’d asked a simple question of Vittorio D’Arienzo, product head of Renault’s AmpR division responsible for the new R5, R4 and Twingo, plus other as yet unnamed small EVs. “Will you make the same mistake again and not make the Twingo in right-hand drive?”
You’ll recall that the hugely successful Patrick Le Quément-designed Twingo city runaround of 1993 was never made with the steering wheel on the right and wasn’t officially sold in Britain. Is Renault about to do the same thing 30 years later?
D’Arienzo, who worked on the Abarth-tweaked Fiat 500 with Renault boss Luca de Meo, is charming, straight-talking and seems to have failed to take on board the iron-clad rule at Renault: never tell les rosbifs anything.
“I would like this car to come to Britain,” he said, confirming also that it has been engineered for right-hand drive. “It’s about the volume now. It is in the plan today and technically the work is done. We are now waiting for the results of the study.”
Renault has been teasing us with the idea of a new Twingo for the last decade. After last year’s 30th anniversary study of a modern Twingo by Sabine Marcelis, it became known that a 3.8-metre long car would be part of the AmpR division’s plans. D’Arienzo says he’s pleased to have managed to make it cheaply enough to cost less than 20,000 euros (£16,700) in Europe. Other voices from within Renault say it is not confirmed for sale, it is not in the plan, it is the subject of discussions at Renault UK. Hum…
Slated for launch in 2026, the Twingo concept on the Renault stand is, according to D’Arienzo, close to sign-off for production, although he was only partly tongue in cheek when he moaned on the eve of the show that the new-found enthusiasm at Renault’s technical and design departments meant engineers and designers were bombarding him with new suggestions to improve the tiddler.
What a shame if we don’t get in the UK…
