CLIO V6
Even now, Eighteen years after it made its debut at the 1998 Paris motor show, the Clio V6 still looks wonderfully outlandish. If you ever chance to see one on the road, it commands at least as much attention as any Ferrari. Look at one for long enough and, even though you know it has a mid-engined ancestor in the Renault 5 Turbo, you start to wonder how on earth it came about…
Back in 1998, Renault was keen to find suitable homes for the 3-litre V6 engine that it had developed jointly with PSA. A plan was even hatched to put it in a Twingo (with a Spider chassis). But top management decided the next Renault Sport project should be a Clio. So the Clio V6 concept appeared in Paris, initially as a track car, with the announcement of a one- make race series. It was after the show that Christian Contzen (director general of Renault Sport) contacted TWR about the possibility of turning the Clio V6 into a road car.
A key player in the project was Stephen Marvin. These days Marvin works for Renault Samsung Motors in Korea, but back in the late ’90s and early 2000s he worked at TWR (he later went on to join Renault Sport, where he masterminded such cars as the R26.R).
Marvin recalls how TWR had just three months to build two mules as proof of concept. One was yellow, one was black; one was based on one of the race cars and one had lashed-up arches. Both were driven to Kemble airfield in early 1999 to be assessed by the great and the good of Renault Sport and TWR. Happily for us they were convinced and, just 18 months later, 30 cars were ready for the launch in Nice. Marvin recounts that they weren’t exactly production-ready and every night there was a fair amount of remedial work (particularly on the gearboxes) using the one ramp available to the team at the local Renault dealership.
We loved it. Richard Meaden’s conclusion in evo 026 was that it was ‘one of the most desirable cars on the planet’, and he concluded: ‘Twenty-six grand won’t buy you a bigger thrill.’
However, perhaps inevitably with a road car that had been productionised from a racer in such a short time, not everything was perfect, and the Phase 1 car had quite a reputation in terms of its handling. Weight distribution and suspension geometry produced both roll oversteer and lateral-force-induced oversteer, or what Marvin describes rather nicely as ‘the rucksack effect’. There were also criticisms that the V6 was underpowered with 227bhp.
For Phase 2, Marvin was project manager. The engine got unique pistons and valves and a new inlet manifold (the mule was kicking out around 270bhp although this was tempered to 251bhp for production). There were new gear ratios and a revised gearshift. Best of all, the chassis was reworked. More caster at the front, more camber at the rear, longer rear trailing
‘You’d probably go faster down a B- road in a Clio Trophy, but the V6 isn’t about pure speed. Never has been’
arms, stiffer top mounts to give more camber support, firmer springs, longer and softer bumpstops, stiffer front anti-roll bar, wider front track, longer wheelbase, bespoke new Michelins… all helped change the balance. With just 40 per cent of the weight on the lightly laden nose, it’s easy to see why it was difficult to get a good contact patch working on the front tyres.
Launched in the spring of 2003, the Phase 2 V6 was a vast improvement. It finished third in ecoty, beating both the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale and the BMW M3 CSL in the process.
Driving one today is still an absolute joy. I always wonder if it will feel slow and awkward on re-acquaintance, but if anything it feels better than ever. The V6 engine is really special, revving so smoothly and with a mellifluous soundtrack that has elements of V8 in its timbre. It’s not the quickest to rev, so you take your time with the gearchanges, but it pulls sweetly, building and building all the way to a joyous 7000rpm.
Turn into a bend and all those old 911 analogies come flooding back. The front end feels light, and it will push wide if you lean on it, the slightly oddly angled wheel unweighting in your hands though not in a really loose or scary way. You just need to manage the front-end grip until you can get on the power and then let the traction do the talking. You’d probably go faster down a B-road in a Clio Trophy, such are the liberties that you can take with that front-wheel-drive hooligan, but the V6 isn’t about pure speed. Never has been.
With the passage of time, it’s more incredible than ever that Renault sanctioned not just one but two iterations of the Clio V6. It’s crazy but brilliant and, to me, its flaws somehow make it all the easier to love. In fact, it’s about time Renault Sport created another mad-engined marvel. The current Twingo’s got the running gear in the right place. I wonder what you could squeeze in there…