Renault Twingo Renaultsport 133 (2008) CAR review

Renault has just unleashed the Twingo Renaultsport. It's the £11,500 little brother to the Clio 197, so it's a bargain, but is it any good? A new-to-the-range 1.6-litre engine provides decent grunt, but the base car is boring to drive - let's find out if Renaultsport has worked a miracle.

Forget the Mini Cooper, I want one of those Twingo Renaultsports!

We’ve criticised the Twingo for looking bland before but it’s really come into its own in Renaultsport guise. A bold and thoroughly modern riposte to the cuteness of the Abarth 500, the hot Twingo’s deep front bumper, side skirts and purposeful stance lend it real impact. You can choose lairy graphics as an option and maybe it’s just the latent boy racer in us, but they actually look great.

Inside, the lack of steering wheel reach adjustment disappoints and the A-pillars ruin forward visibility but there are soft but supportive buckets, a pod-mounted rev counter ahead of you and standard air conditioning. And that’s before you start with the options.

In fact there are all manner of ways to personalise your Twingo including the amusing ‘Power Pads’ in the footwell which cover the three pedals, displaying the pause, stop and play symbols you get on a DVD player on the clutch, brake and accelerator respectively.

Presumably it’s based on the warm 1.2 Turbo but has the wick turned up a bit?

No, there’s not a turbo in sight. Renault is committed to using naturally aspirated engines where possible for its performance cars, believing that the easy power of a turbo engine often doesn’t give the right character. So the hot Twingo uses a tweaked 1.6 with variable valve timing on the inlet cam that revs to 7000rpm and delivers 132bhp at 6750rpm together with 118lb ft of torque at 4400rpm.

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