Car Throttle

Ah, now this is a fine sort of madness, now isn’t it? Stuffing a V8 into the back seat of a Renault Twingo. And stating off with a Twingo? Brilliant. Even by French standards, Renault’s Twingo always truck me as being a flimsy car, so cramming something like a big powerful engine into one, let alone mid-mounting it, seems to be a good way to twist the body up like a dishtowel.

The Twingo in question was built a French custom car and motorcycle builder called Lazareth (an appropriate name, in a certain way). Lazareth was inspired by the track version of the Renault Megane Trophy and the Clio V6 Renault Sport, so they called this little guy the Twingo Trophy.

Lazareth took a base first-gen Twingo mini and converted it into a track-racer by ditching the scrawny, front-mounted stock engine and cramming in a Range-Rover-sourced 3.5-liter V8 with 180 horsepower behind the front seats. The power gets to the tarmac via the rear wheels through a 5-speed manual gearbox.

Lazareth had to extensively modify the Twingo’s chassis, adding a rear tubular subframe, replacing the suspension and, thankfully also replacing the brakes as well as widening the front and rear track as well. That’s just a partial list, by the way. The Twingo Trophy rides on 18-inch Toora alloy wheels wrapped in Yokohama slicks, 230s up front and 320s out the back.

The exterior is “matte gray” but it looks like primer gray to me and the ‘sported-up’ interior boasts a pair of MOMO racing bucket seats, a sport steering wheel and new digital gauges. Price? According to Lazareth, the Twingo Trophy V8 could be yours for a paltry €70,000, assuming you’re rich enough and insane enough to go down this road.

I find in surprising that they left the V8 pumping out only 180 horsepower. Sure, that’s about 176 more than the original Twingo put out, but you know they could get a LOT More out of that plant.

Source: CarScoop