Designed by Michel Boué in his own time, outside his regular duties at Renault, and rushed into a formal programme once executives saw what he had drawn, the 5 launched in January 1972 with a steeply raked hatchback that still looked modern next to the Mini and Hillman Imp it competed against.[1] Its motorsport offshoot, the Renault 5 Turbo, took the name and general shape but moved the engine amidships and drove the rear wheels. It is a completely different car under the skin, built to homologate a Group 4 rally car, and recorded here as a trim only because Wikipedia’s own article treats it as part of the 5 family.
Five trims are recorded, from the original 845 cc entry engine up to the mid-engined Turbo homologation special. Every horsepower figure in the source is given in PS and converted here at the standard metric rate; kerb weight is only published as a range across the ordinary front-engined cars, so the lowest figure is recorded at generation level rather than assigned to a specific trim.
