Renault 5 Review: Too GOOD to Be This CHEAP?
Try to think of an electric car that is universally loved.
It's hard to do it. There isn't a single car out there from anyone, including BMW, Ford, Audi, and Mercedes, that doesn't at least have some haters somewhere. But we might finally have found a car that actually might be impossible not to love, and this is it. It's the new Renault 5, the reboot of the classic French hatchback of the 70s and 80s. We first saw it in concept form in 2021, where it made everybody's jaw drop, and the production version has finally arrived. It's just got this fun, cheeky, sturdy look about it that is just desirable. And actually, normally, when a car is desirable, they tend to be really expensive. But this... this actually starts from $22,995, and if you want to pay for it monthly with a lease through Auto Trader (because we do leases), you can lease one with Auto Trader for less than £300 a month. I want one now, especially when it looks this good.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
It's a lot bigger than the original 5 but still compact.
It's about Fiesta-sized, just more adorable. The rectangular headlights with rectangular details on the lens mimic the rectangular DRLs. The five motif on the bonnet lights up to show you your charge status, and there's just a ton of other interesting detail almost everywhere you look. So, there are four colors to choose from: yellow pop, diamond black, arctic white, and then this one, which is green pop. I love these alloys as well – 18 inches, these are the 12 spokes, which come as part of the top package. I love this little detail down here as well; that five is a nice little touch. And also, these big chunky wheel arches, front and back, just give it a nice muscular stance. You get this little five motif here, which is part of a decal package that also includes stickers on the roof as an option. You've got this contrasting lower section down here, and also this red stripe that runs all the way along the top of the car. Unlike the OG Renault 5, which was a three-door, this is actually a five-door, although the door handles for the rear doors are hidden away in the C pillar to keep things nice and neat.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
Now, because it's a small car, you could be forgiven for thinking that the boot is useless.
And you'd be right-ish. But it's actually bigger than you might think. That is 326L of space, and that's 30L more than you get in a Ford Fiesta, 140L more than you get in a Fiat 500. There's also some underfloor storage so you can hide your charge cables away. Plus, you can drop the rear seats. Let me just have a look at that. That's one and that's two. Okay, they don't fold totally flat, you're not going to get a washing machine or a wardrobe in there, but that is bigger than you might expect. It's not totally cramped in the back either. Headroom is good, legroom is just about passable for two six-footers, and there are seat pockets for hiding away valuables. But there are no rear temperature controls or door bins for storage or cup holders or a sunroof. But it's not a bad place to spend short amounts of time.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
Now normally, in a car that costs £300 a month if you lease it through Auto Trader , you'd expect the quality to be trash.
But this is anything but. It's quite lovely in here. I really like these seats. It's got this kind of multi-textured surfacing going on, which looks a bit like denim. You've got blue here, yellow here, nice white stitching, and also the denim effect can be found up here on the dashboard as well. That looks and feels really nice. You've also got some piano black, because hey, we live in a modern world, and that's what you get in cars. Plus, some ambient lighting, and this is a nice touch. You see the same pattern from the headlights repeated on the vents. That is really cool. Obviously, there is some scratchy plastic, especially here in the middle and also on the lower sections of the doors. But on the whole, the quality in the R5 is something to behold, especially for the price.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
In terms of storage, the door bins are comically small, but you do get a little bit of storage.
Especially with this partition section for holding your cups, and also, yeah, I mean that is quite tiny in the center. But you do get this wireless charging pad for your mobile phone and a couple of USB ports. Don't know what that's for though, that's a bit strange. As for technology, it's really good as well. You've got these two 10-inch screens: one for the driver and one for your entertainment, and the resolution looks really good. Plus, it's incredibly responsive. You get Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, but the actual tech baked into the system is really nippy. It's powered by Google, and look at that, I'm zipping around in Google Maps built into the car, and it's really cool. I could zoom into Alabama or something if I wanted to, yeah, that's really nice. You've also got some shortcut buttons down the bottom for your heated seats and heated steering wheel in a £300-a-month car. Plus, hard buttons for controlling all your aircon, which is a lot better than you get on some cars, and the same goes for the steering wheel as well. It's a kind of squircle design but still has physical buttons, which just make it a lot easier to use.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
Speaking of tech, it also comes with a voice assistant called Renault.
And I'll summon him or her now for you. Uh, "Hey Renault, open all the windows." Should do it. Look at that. "Hey Renault, close all the windows." Now, this guy can be incredibly annoying at times, he's not listening. "Hey Renault, close all the... [Music] windows." "Window is already fully open." Incredibly annoying sometimes, but also helpful on occasion. We'll talk about Renault some more in just a second.
Okay, so far, so compelling. What's it like to drive?
Well, what you got to know about the Renault 5 is that it comes in a few different versions. The entry-level car, the one that's $23,995, is called The Evolution, and with that, you get a 120-horsepower electric motor driving the front wheels. It will do 0 to 62 in around 9 seconds. It has a range of 193 miles from a 40 kWh battery pack, and it charges at 7 kW AC, a normal speed, or 80 kW DC, which is slightly on the slow side when it comes to rapid charging. If you spend £22,000 extra, you can get the Techno version, which gives you a bit more power, 150 horses, 0 to 62 in just under 8 seconds, and a bigger range from a 52 kWh battery pack. It'll go 293 miles, plus it charges faster as well. As for which version you go for, it's a really nice car to drive. I think the suspension is reasonably well-judged— not too hard, not too soft. It feels like it's nicely damped and pretty much takes everything in its stride. The seats are really comfortable, and the steering is nice and light, perfect for town driving.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
But the car isn't without its problems.
Look behind the steering wheel. There is a lot going on here. As well as your drive selector, which takes you between reverse, neutral, drive, and extra brake regeneration, you've also got the wipers down here just below it and the controls for the stereo. And believe me, I've lost count of the number of times when I've been trying to park this car, and I'm trying to put it into reverse but end up putting the wipers on by mistake. There's just too much happening right here. The other problem I have with this car is that it doesn't have a P button for park. You know, in a normal car when you pull up and you press P, and that means that you're not in drive anymore? This doesn't have it. Instead, you've got to pull the handbrake to prevent the car from rolling forward, but because it's still in drive or reverse, there's still that psychological element which makes you think that lifting off the footbrake will cause the car to still move. I don't like that. There is a way around it. You can use the automatic hold feature, so you press the A button, and whenever you pull up to a stop, the car will automatically engage the handbrake for you and then disengage it when you accelerate. But that can be a bit jerky. Let me demonstrate.
Okay, let me do a little parallel park on camera, which I'm bound to mess up.
Don't judge me. So, I'll pull in. Nice light steering, good visibility around the car. There, I've parked. Now try not to turn the wipers on. Is that one, isn't it? Move forward a bit. Okay, so I've got my automatic hold feature on. But let's say I'm trying to position the car properly between the car in front and the car behind. Now, what you'd expect is for the car to move forward quite smoothly, but not in this case. It actually accelerates quite, not violently, but not quite as smoothly as you might expect. So if you're in a tight space, there is that risk of maybe hitting something if you're not careful enough with the accelerator.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
Let's talk about efficiency.
Regardless of which battery size you go for, Renault, or rather the WLTP testing procedure, says you'll get 4.8 miles per kWh. I have no doubt that that kind of economy figure is possible, but I do have doubts about whether it's realistic. All the time, it might be possible in the warm winter months, but I happen to be testing this Renault 5 in a very cold January 2025. It's about 3°C outside, and yeah, that efficiency, I'm not getting it. I'm actually getting, on the motorway, locked in at 70 mph, about 20 kWh per 100 km. What is that in miles per kilowatt hour? Well, actually, we can ask our little friend, little clippy chat GPT thingy here. Hey Renault, what is 20 kWh per 100 km in miles per kilowatt hour? Don't explain your working, just give me the answer. To convert 28 kilowatt hours per 100 km into miles per kilowatt hour, it equals approximately 0.45 miles per kWh.
The answer I've worked out is about 3 miles per kWh.
This means that if you go for the 40 kWh battery pack, that's 3 * 40, which is 120. That's your range on the motorway with the smallest battery. With the bigger battery, locked in at 70 mph on the motorway at 3 miles per kilowatt hour, you're looking at about 152 miles of range. Now, I did actually test the efficiency driving more slowly around normal roads, and this car, in these conditions, will get about 3.8 miles per kilowatt hour, which works out to be about just shy of 200 miles if you get the bigger battery pack. So, not bad at all. Not what they say, but not bad. In terms of what it's like to drive on the motorway, it's certainly not bad. The car is actually surprisingly quiet, doing 70 mph. There's very little wind noise, minimal road noise, and I feel like I'm driving a far more expensive car than what I'm actually in. We haven't got a lot of power to play with, but I'll floor it, and there's definitely enough poke for the car to do a little bit of overtaking. It never feels like a complete slouch.
This is actually quite respectable.
If you were worried about this car being too small and too underpowered for motorway use, put that out of your mind. The only drawback, of course, is going to be the range if you're locked in at high speeds. But what about fun factor? Is the Renault 5 enjoyable to drive when you want to have fun? The simple answer is yes. So, I started driving in the late '90s, early 2000s, and that was Peak hot hatch era, and the OG Renault 5 was one of the most fun hot hatches you could buy. It's important to remember that this isn't a hot hatch; it's just a hatch. But the performance is still pretty decent—0 to 62 in under 8 seconds, 7.9 to be precise, ain't to be sniffed at. And if you had that back in the day, you had a fast car.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
There are several driving modes in this car, and each one gives the car a different feel.
There's Comfort, Eco, Sports, and Perso, which is a kind of personalized setting, and each one of them can be customized to your specific taste. For example, you can make the steering wheel lighter or heavier, you can make the throttle response a bit more ferocious or a bit more relaxed, or you can customize the driving dynamics. The general trend these days is for electric cars to be rear-wheel drive. It's better for efficiency, but this is front-wheel drive, like the old school hot hatches from the '90s, so it's got a familiar character. You can feel the front wheels scrabbling around for grip, especially when you're pulling aggressively out of a junction or accelerating out of a corner. It gives the car quite a lot of very welcome character. On the subject of character, I'm not the biggest fan of the brakes. I think they work very well in terms of being strong; they slow the car down nicely, and I've got to give Renault props for giving us disc brakes all around. Some manufacturers cheap out by giving us old-school drum brakes in their lower-end affordable electric cars, but we got the proper stuff in this.
Only, the only thing I'm complaining about is the feel of the brakes when you're going at low speeds.
They kind of get a bit snatchy as you come towards a standstill, although there's a solution for that—never slow down. I do like the handling in this car. The batteries are mounted low down, which means that the center of mass is right towards the bottom of the car. You do get a little bit of body roll, but it is controlled really well. There's a surprising amount of grip as well. You can chuck it into a corner, and the thing holds on quite nicely. Eventually, it will start to wash out and understeer, but it does it very progressively. And if you're cheeky enough to lift off mid-understeer, then you can actually feel the nose tuck itself in and the back end occasionally step out. A little bit of cheeky lift-off oversteer like the old school.
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| Photo Credit By Google |
If I was going to add one thing to this car, I think I'd add a bit of sound to it.
I know electric cars are supposed to be quiet, but it does help to have a bit of noise that corresponds to your acceleration. And of course, if you want to have even more fun, you could opt for the Alpine A290, essentially a Renault 5 with a bit more power and a bit more aggression: 220 horsepower, 0 to 62 in as little as 6.4 seconds, better handling, and slightly more aggressive looks. Although you will have to pay 10 grand more for the privilege. I do look forward to driving the Alpine, but honestly, for 20 grand, I don't think you've got a lot to complain about here. This is a lot of fun. Obviously, there's one big, big thing that remains, and that is to ask how this car compares to a lot of its major rivals, the Fiat 500e and the Mini Electric in particular. And actually, I think it compares favorably. It's a lot of fun, more practical, and it's significantly cheaper. This thing ticks a lot of boxes. I'm not saying it's the best by far, but come on, for the money, the fun factor, and the sheer "oh my God, just look at it" factor, the Renault 5 is a brilliant piece of kit.