As we’ve owned around 10 or 11 RenaultSport cars between us (from 5 GT Turbos, 21 Turbos, Clio 16v, Clio 172 Mk1, Clio 182 and Megane R26 to name but a few) we thought it would be daft not to continue in this tradition and hunt out a Renaultsport track bitch. Initially we started looking at 172 Clios, as there are many to be had around the £1,500 budget. But slowly our search started to focus on one Renault in particular.
The Renault 5 GT Turbo.
Why pick this car? They’re 22 years old, most have been abused, they rust and eat head gaskets, turbos and anything else they can get their teeth into. There were four quite big reasons why we chose a 5GT Turbo.
One, my mate and one of the co-buyers has owned three or four in his life and knows the cars inside out, he can fix almost anything on them (inc. welding) this would mean very limited labour costs for maintaining the car, whilst not a mechanic by trade, he is pretty handy on a car he knows a lot about.
Two, they are very light (around 850kg when new) and can be easily modified, plus if you buy the right one, someone will have done the modifications for you. Most Renault 5 GT Turbos have been modified so if we wait we could get something quite ‘nasty’. With that power to weight ratio, you could have a car that could embarrass serious hardware on-track.
Three, as they are over 20 years old, you can insure them on a classic car insurance policy, even with all modifications declared it is possible to get insurance for less than £300 fully comp.
Four, car tax, as the car is pre 2001 and has an engine size ‘Not over 1,549cc’ the road fund license for 12 months is only £125, by comparison a 172 Clio costs around £205 to tax for the year. I’d rather £80 in our pocket than the tax man.
For us there really was no option. Our track bitch of choice was going to be a Renault 5 GT Turbo. Ideally with sensible modifications, but the main goal was to get a solid shell, free from rust and a car that could be driven away.
No comments:
Post a Comment