Machine: Renault Sport Spider

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Spideristi
Beiträge: 3098
Registriert: Di 1. Okt 2002, 02:00
Wohnort: D-85xxx, Deutschland, Bayern, zwischen München und Wasserburg a. Inn

Machine: Renault Sport Spider

Beitrag von Spideristi »

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Machine: Renault Sport Spider
The closest you can get to a street legal F1 car.

January 26, 2002
As a general rule, European carmakers are known for making their sporty models quite versatile, which created trademark genres like the hot hatch (which claimed the name "sports compact" when the idea was picked up in the New World), the GT cruiser, and the supersedan. These cars can do a lot and then some on a twisty backroad, but are also quite easy to live with on a daily basis. But fans do want something more extreme, and so French automotive giant Renault, who at the time was enjoying a particularly successful relationship with the Williams F1 team, created a car that allowed one to feel like Nigel Mansell without having to buy a written-off Minardi and trailering it to track days.

The Renault Sport Spider was a car that made do without anything in the way of creature comforts ? not so much as a windshield in the more extreme trim. The body of the car was an aluminium spaceframe with plastic panels over it. It was in no way a pretty shape, but conveyed the sort of purposeful look that you just have to respect. It was created and built by Renault Sport, one of the in-house tuning companies (the other is semi-independent Alpine, not affiliated with the car audio maker). In a time when Europeans, especially rich ones, were quite demanding to their cars, here was a creation that was imagined, and could be used, for one single purpose: to be driven hard on the mountain roads that the Cote d'Azur boasts.
The car was initially not even meant to have a windscreen, which could have lead to Renault ordering a batch of customized, limited-edition helmets to include with every purchase of a Sport Spider, not to keep the drivers safe (this car did, after all, have a prominent rollbar over the two leather buckets) but to keep the wind out of their clients' hair. The production version was equipped with one, though, and it even had a wiper, which was in effect a marketing trick on par with the legendary third rear headrest on superminis ? side windows and a roof were conspicuous through their lack of presence.

The interior was basic; in fact, Renault Sport filled the car with just enough equipment to drag it through legalizing procedures; just how it all worked out in a crash test, we'll never know. The end result weighed 790 kilograms (just over 1700lb.), and the almost-stock, high-revving 150bhp 2.0 four-cylinder accelerated it to 60mph in just under seven seconds, which might not be mind-boggling, but the sensation of a crankshaft making seven thousand revolutions per minute behind your back with just a thin piece of plastic separating you gave the car that extra appeal that made fans pay large sums for quite possibly the most unpractical car ever made; it is for this reason that Ferrari chose to leave an open window between the cockpit and engine bay of its 360 Modena coupe.

The Renault Sport Spider was manufactured in very limited quantities, and spawned a monoformula ? a manufacturer-sponsored racing series where all the drivers have identical cars. An independent French company, Helem, built an even smaller run of V6-powered Sport Spiders with roofs (which required some extensive bodywork and made the car less... well... ugly). In the end, though, the car was simply too expensive for Renault to make, and not able to compete with the cheaper, more practical, and equally fun Lotus Elise. And so, one of the most extreme driver's cars of the 20th century was pulled from production and put to rest, forgotten by all but a handful of devoted fans.


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Fahren, statt putzen! :P
Schrauben, statt fahren... :-o
sascha h-k
Beiträge: 760
Registriert: Mo 4. Mär 2002, 02:00

Beitrag von sascha h-k »

Machine: Renault Sport Spider "The closest you can get to a street legal F1 car"
ist wohl ewas sehr optimistisch ... (um nicht zu sagen: ahnungslos)

grüße sascha
grüße, sascha

kömmt zeit kömmt TVR kömmen eingetragene 103db / 3k rpm
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