Retro

An artist has added lightness and electricity to the original Renault Twingo

One of the cutest city cars makes a one-off return in this ‘Twingo like no other’

Vijay PattniPublished: 28 Jun 2023  External link to Top Gear Magazine Subscription – 5 issues for £5Skip 12 photos in the image carousel and continue reading1 / 12

The original Renault Twingo could be thought of as one of the fastest cars in the world… using a generous application of ‘holiday rental car’ logic (rentals being the very fastest things on four wheels, of course). First unveiled in 1993, Brits could only sample Renault’s lightweight, cleverly designed city runabout while in Europe.

Which must mean its return as an even lighter, one-off EV pushes it into the realms of supercar pace. Maybe. Anyway, this is an artist’s reinterpretation of one of the coolest and best-designed small cars ever made.

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The artist in question is one Sabine Marcelis, winner of the ELLE DECO International Designer of the Year Award, who has honed in on the Twingo’s “most recognisable features”. Such features include “its iconic single-volume silhouette, its characteristic headlights, its modular interior with its incredible sense of space and luminosity”. Remember upon its launch at the turn of the Nineties, this design – aping the one-box silhouette of the Espace – was deemed radical.

Sabine’s gutted the baby car and stripped everything back to those elements, all the while working on “the play of transparency and the interplay between colour and materials”. It’s a cool-looking thing, no doubt.

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