Renault Twingo 'reinvents small car'

Renault says it has been able to “reinvent the small car” due to the technical packaging of the next-generation Renault Twingo city car, which is set to use a rear-engined, rear-drive set-up that maximises interior space.

Renault’s chief operating officer, Carlos Tavares, said the Twingo, which is due at the end of next year, will be “compact, quite muscular and very agile, with a good ratio of roominess versus outside dimensions”.

The new Twingo is the product of a platform-sharing project between Daimler and Renault that will also spawn a new Smart Fortwo and Forfour.

“We were lucky that we were starting again with a blank sheet of paper, thanks to our alliance with Daimler,” said Renault design chief Laurens van den Acker. “We started with a new platform and that gave us the opportunity to reinvent the small car. 

“I hope we can show it is the best way to go. If the engine is in the rear, you can shift the instrument panel forward so you can have a relatively large cabin for a very short length.

“Boot space is reduced, but you can compensate by coming up with clever functionality in the rest of the interior.”

As well as taking styling inspiration from the rear-drive, V6-engined Twin’Run concept revealed at the Monaco Grand Prix, the new Twingo will be informed by the electric Twin’Z design that appeared in April. 

Van den Acker said two concepts were made to emphasise that the next Twingo will be a car with broad appeal. “If we’d just done Twin’Run, people would say, ‘This is for car enthusiasts’ and we’d make the focus very narrow,” he said. “By doing two concepts, we showed that you can do a lot with this.”

The track-focused Twin’Run was partly inspired by the Renault 5 Turbo, and features a large glasshouse that dominates the rear hatch.

“The rear glass shape is iconic and saves us weight,” said van den Acker. “It is lighter than a hatchback with a steel section. On top of that, for a city car to create good visibility makes really good sense.”

But the new Twingo won’t feature retro design cues to the same degree as the Fiat 500. Neither will it seek to reinvent the first Twingo’s ground-breaking ‘monospace’ design, which combined compact dimensions with interior space.

“The monospace silhouette is hard to achieve now due to pedestrian safety demands,” said van den Acker. “So we had to go with a little nose, which you can see on the Twin’Run.”