The Renault 5 'Turbo 3' Is An 80s Mid-Engine Hero Reborn For The 21st Century

When French car designer Alan Derosier moved to Los Angeles in 2018, his dream was to create reimagined Porche 911s. Realising this genre was already “well covered” by the likes of Singer and Gunther Works, Derosier teamed up with fellow US-based Frenchmen Charly Bompas and Pierre Chaveyriat to do something arguably much more interesting - rework the Renault 5 Turbo for the 21st century.

The trio’s burgeoning firm, Legende Automobile, set out to create the ultimate version of the mid-engined homologation special dubbed the ‘Turbo 3’. With access to modern materials all the cost restrictions of the original thrown out the window, the results are rather spectacular. You might wish to ogle these images before proceeding further.

Done? Good - we can get into all the juicy details. Chief among these is the new body, which is almost entirely made of carbon fibre and also a lot wider than the Turbo and Turbo 2’s. The upsized body is necessary both for the wider wheels and the wider suspension setup.

On the latter front, the Turbo 3 gets a front and rear double-wishbone setup shared with the Maxi Turbo competition car. Other than that, chassis details are scarce - we don’t know what sort of dampers the car will use, and there’s no word on the brake setup either.

The stoppers will have almost certainly been beefed up, though, as this is considerably more powerful than a Turbo 2. You’re looking at around 400bhp from some sort of turbocharged engine, which we reckon will still be an inline-four.

Inside, you get a half cage, a fabric-clad dashboard, a dual-zone climate control, and even a matching reusable coffee cup (neat!). Just behind this oh-so 2020s detail is something much more old school - a proper manual shifter with a partially exposed linkage.

The final unknown is the price, although we can be fairly sure that it’ll be a suitably wallet-busting figure given the level of detail and the amount of carbon fibre going on. “We ignored all financial advice and spared no expense in making sure that this is the best possible version of the B-segment icon,” Legende says.