When did cheap become a dirty word? Why is the association with not wanting or being able to spend a lot shame rather than freedom? There used to be this concept called cheap-and-cheerful, where you weren’t punished at every turn for buying the inexpensive car, the store-brand food, or the white-labelled but funkily-painted white goods. While cheap Western EVs aren’t exactly a new concept, France is about to make them particularly adorable and endearing to own. Extremely official-looking photos of the new Renault Twingo have surfaced online, and while there are a few changes from the concept car, fans of the iconic city car likely won’t be disappointed.
What sort of changes, you ask? For one, the semicircular door handles are just gone, replaced with more standard pull-out handles. It’s a missed opportunity for a bit of charm, but if they’re parts bin handles, the commitment to keeping costs low isn’t going unnoticed. Secondly, the chunky wheel arch trims are gone, replaced with more slender units. Thirdly, there’s been some general production car-ization. The front bumper now sports a real intake for heat exchangers, the side mirrors are larger than on the concept, and you see parking sensors and retroreflectors appear to suit consumer taste and regulation. However, other than those touches, the new Twingo looks pretty much like the concept car we saw just two short years ago.
This means it has the same friendly ’90s-nostalgic face, the same triple hood vents, the same black band around the rear window. Even the lighting’s surprisingly close to what we saw on the show car. On face value, it seems that Renault hasn’t cocked this one up, but did you really expect anything different? The reborn Renault 5 is a masterclass in affordable style and the new Renault 4 manages to be chic and feel well-built without breaking the bank. Sure, the targeted sub-€20,000 price tag means the production Twingo needed some small sacrifices, but on first glance, it hits the visual spot, especially in sunflower yellow.
There’s good news on the inside too, where a big slab of body-color plastic dresses up the dashboard without splurging too much. Molding the Twingo wordmark into the plastic is a great way to break up the surface for essentially free, and joy of joys, there’s proper switchgear. Three knobs for your climate control, a giant hazard warning lamp switch that looks like a boiled sweet, real buttons on the steering wheel, and on the left edge of the dashboard. If Renault can spend the money on physical controls on such an inexpensive car, there’s no excuse for cheap and nasty capacitive touch controls in luxury products, full-stop.
It also doesn’t seem like Renault’s skimped on storage in the new Twingo. There’s a small tray in a half-console sprouting from the dashboard and a far larger one that sits beneath the infotainment screen and the body-color trim panel. Perfect for phones, parking slips, errant lemon sherbets, that sort of stuff. Speaking of infotainment, it’s not a huge surprise to see the family interface here, along with a digital instrument cluster. Welcome to the electric age. I am a bit curious as to what the red thing in the floor console is, but I suppose all will be revealed in due time.
There’s still a lot we don’t know about the new Twingo, like what sort of battery pack powers it and what the charging specs are like, but it seems like Renault’s done something impressive here. Not only has it done a reasonably convincing job of molding the pinch-me-cute looks of the original model around a modern form factor, it’s created a cheap electric car that’s actually cheerful. It won’t be long until Renault tells everyone more about its new electric baby, and when that happens, we’ll be here to relay all the details.
Top graphic image: Renault
Does it have hvac vents to the right of the driver? We’ll see more pics in due time.
Renault is on a roll. Where I live in France I see the new Renault 5 and 4’s regularly and they look great. This is just one more fine looking car.
I Really dig it.
Damn Europeans getting all the cool shit.
Just having a car called “Twingo” makes it all worth it. Have to wonder how the French pronounce that.
Renault seems to be on a roll lately with their styling and this looks great. Too bad we won’t get it in the US.
I’ve always appreciated the joie de vivre the Twingo tries to encompass. It’s a small, happy car. It’s not MAD AT THE WORLD like everything else is trying to be.
It’s why we don’t see anything similar in the US: because we only buy MAD. Our economy cars must project how dissatisfied we are with our current lot in life.
With that said, I’ve a friend who moved back to Denmark years ago, and he has a 2nd gen RenaultSport Twingo as the family daily. Including kid duty. He has also a 190E 2.3-16 Evo II that he brought back to Denmark (from Boston) with him. Envy…
They don’t appear to have learned from the Renault Twingo SmILE prototype that Greenpeace built in 1996, which took the same form factor and made a car with significant drag reduction, reducing Cd from 0.37 to 0.25.
This car SHOULD have a Cd value of 0.25 or less. Greenpeace did it 30 years ago. Especially as an EV where platform efficiency matters more than with an ICE. If it doesn’t come close to the SmILE’s Cd or beats it, it will confirm that Renault isn’t really trying.
People don’t buy cars based on a Cd value. Also this is a car that will spend most of its life in a packed city traffic jam. There’s more than efficiency that goes into making a product people want to buy.
One of the reasons someone would buy a Twingo would be for fuel efficiency, in the interest of low operating costs. And like all the other cars, it is nowhere near as efficient as it could be, even with little to no additional expense on the cost to make the car.
How efficient is efficient enough? “They don’t appear to have learned.. ” I’m sorry but what exactly is there to learn from a non-productionised one-off prototype? And how were you able to judge the Cd from a picture? The main reason the og Twingo was such a mania was its aesthetics, not any promises of particular efficiency from its pushrod 40 year old engine.
As far as Renault is concerned the main factor for this becoming a hit is the design, compromising some kms of the range in favor of it is the way to go.
Obviously now is not the time to launch an electric sub-brand. But wouldn’t it be cool if Nissan leveraged their Renault connection and used this and the R5 as a quirky young electric city brand here in the US? Having plainly functional, but also fun looking compact cars is something that is underserved here in the US. Won’t happen, but I can dream.
Looks like the perfect future car for when I make my asylum claim in Portugal.
That is absolutely the face my tortie cat makes when she steals a full-ass Texas Roadhouse chicken breast off the counter.
“Do what you will, for I have already won.”
It’s cute, it’s lovely and doesn’t have single angry looking light! I like it.
I’ve gotta be like one of the 87 people in the USA who would buy such a car. Light on the wallet, high on the looks. Great car.
I’m not sure whether that face is happy, suspicious or stoned.
It tells me the story of: “Hue hue, look at how I cut off that Fiat Multipla.”
On the other hand, every time I see a 90s Miata, I smile and my day becomes a tiny bit nicer.
Anyway, I’d absolutely take the Renault 5 over this.
Derived from the same corporate-created stigma that associates small with cheap, as in, we need to make more money off of you, so our long term marketing campaign has convinced you to take the route most profitable for us. Think of the De Beers syndicate and their nonsense of requiring a very common rock for matrimonial matters needing to cost you six months of your salary. Ridiculous!
I love it, I think it’s precious, and I want to pet it.
Lovely!
And the back with this color and rubber…
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Looks like another fun European thing we won’t get over here! Glad it’s gonna exist though!
They didn’t sell the original in the UK. People imported them anyway, steering wheel on the wrong side and all.
Happy Twingo Tuesday!
Dear Renault,
Please give some thought to bringing your toys over to our house.
PS: if this keeps up I may lose my Citroen fascination.
PPS: in the day I had an orange R5. Loved it. Cheap, fun, chic, with amazingly comfortable seats for a 6’2” guy. Le Car indeed
Would it be wrong to move to France just to buy one of the new small Renaults? I could see driving around Brittany in a Twingo or new 5.
No. It is totally the correct response. So much so that a friend and I ( he is a contractor/house remodeler) were thinking about one of those 1 Euro Italian dying town buys. Of course for the joy of having a place in Europe but mostly to have a driveway/garage to park our unobtainiums on/in. Crazy? Maybe. Genious? Maybe.
It’s perfectly fine. As an American who’s tired of the direction my country has gone, I’m giving serious consideration to taking up residency in Europe once I retire. France, Portugal, and Spain are all high on my list of potential places to go. And tinkering with old European “people’s cars” like small Renaults, Citroens and Fiats/SEATs is on my bucket list if I go there..
Ditto. I’d add Greece to the list.
We can meet up if our plan goes through
Bring back the re-imagined “LeCar”!…. (to the US market)
It has the hatchback shape US buyers crave, give it a little bit bigger wheel arch cladding, hike the hight up an inch and call it a cute ute
Then collect all the monies!
Nice.
Not everything needs to look so angry like it’s trying to run you over.
The concept door handles were infinitely better. I loved the half circle for the front doors, and cars this small look better as 3 door, so the hidden rear handles made it look much sharper too. I know it’s for keeping it cheap, but those changes completely transformed the side profile for me and not in a good way at all. Big downgrade unfortunately.
Facing the front: (.^_^.)
From behind: (.^ , ^.)
Love that yellow!! My inner attention whore says I wish it was coming here!
Yellow (and orange) are warm happy colors.
Make Cars with colors again
Personally recently made my own contribution buying the Purplish hue 26′ chevy Equinox ev. That and the blue they offered were the only non-black/gray/white options and it is kinda fun
Look at its little face! It’s Sweeeeeet!
If those little gray/black bumper nubs on the front were painted red it’d be Pikachu
Dafuq is the red thing??? Is that a 12V plug in front of it? And where is the shifter? So many questions… Le rouge est mis I guess…
I wonder if it is a removable Bluetooth speaker. I’ve seen a few mentions of such a concept as a way to provide decent audio in a cheap and/or startup built car. I vaguely remember the Indian startup Pravaig wanting to use Devialet’s bluetooth speakers in their flagship, and I think Slate had similar ideas.
Edit: after looking them up out of curiosity, Pravaig have apparently abandoned the civilian car market entirely and pivoted hard towards military EVs. So no more Devialet audio systems, I guess….
The big red thing on the floor of the center console? Looks very plastic-y and out of place. We have cup holders for 164 oz sodas in our cars, perhaps they have dedicated enclosures for morning pastries. Otherwise, no idea.
The drive selector is the stalk on the column on the upper right.
I’d bet the red object is an optional ashtray.
Most likely a tissue box