This should be interesting. We took a car everyone already likes and tried to make it faster. But at what cost to the everyday stuff.
There’s barely a reason to list why the Renault 5 is good. You’ve heard it all by now. It looks sharp. The tech doesn’t crash. It’s decent enough range-wise and actually fun to toss around a corner. We’ve written plenty of columns praising it. Justifiably so.
So take that formula and turn up the heat? Surely that has to be a winner. Or so you’d think. Our time with the Alpine A29 suggests exactly that. It adds the necessary kick to the R5 recipe. Crucially, it doesn’t smash the mass appeal. It keeps the doors open for everyone, really. This gives us something we haven’t had: a real template for an electric hot hatch. Not a joke. Not a niche experiment.
Think about it. What we’ve seen so far isn’t exactly a gold standard. We got half-cooked messes. The MG 4 XPower tried to have all the stats but no engineering brain. The Smart #1 Brabus? Same vibe. Then you get the cheeky ones. The Abarth 500E. The Mini JCW Electric. Fun, sure. But you had to sacrifice something important to drive them. Compromised. Every. Single. One.
The Alpine is different. It proves an EV can actually be a proper hot hatch. But speed on a track day means nothing if you can’t drive it on Tuesday in the rain. It can’t just be a laugh on a twisty backroad. It has to earn a smile every morning. Every weather. Every day.
