It was thirty years ago that the Renault Twingo went on sale. A pioneer of a large space on a small surface and a pure example of designer imagination. In its day, the Twingo was admired, but also resented, including by many people at Renault. Today, however, everyone applies to him. In the end, the infantile stroller was produced for fourteen years and bought by two and a half million people. Similar success in this class will hardly be repeated by anyone.
That someone didn’t think of it earlier, we often say to ourselves over well-done things. This is certainly true of the Renault Twingo. It was even shorter than the Trabant, yet it comfortably transported four adults, let a loving couple sleep over or loaded a lawnmower.
And it looked so cute. More like a toy, chief designer Patrik Le Quément talked about a pet. Women liked the Twingo for a long time and the manufacturer catered to them. Starting with cheerful shades of paint and a color-coordinated interior, ending with limited series with partner companies from the world of fashion and fragrance: Benetton, Kenzo, L’Oreal.
At the same time, the birth of the Twingo was not at all as self-evident as it seems today. There were not entirely happy judges at his cradle.
Renault was not at its best in the 1980s. Owned by the state, it generated billions of losses every year. The worse things got, the more the accountants with no ideas had a say, the cars were lean and poorly sold. Director Georges Besse, who was tasked with cutting and firing by the government, in November 1986 shot by left-wing radicals.
His successor, Raymond Lévy, had the courage to continue and knew that the stale structures of the company needed fresh air and new brooms. As chief designer, he called Patrick Le Quément, who was a native Frenchman, but gained experience in Britain and America. At the age of forty-three, he was at the peak of his powers and had already managed to gain respect with the design of the Ford Sierra.
Le Qément looked for the best place to start a sharp cut and found inspiration in a hangar of rejected prototypes. A few came from a research project on aerodynamics and low consumption. Therefore, they had a single-compartment body and a tapered nose. The smallest of them was actually an almost finished Twingo, they just had to make it a little bigger and fit those round lights.
However, product managers in ties stiffened their faces at the childishness of the proposal and almost managed to throw the whole thing off the table. The Twingo even caught fire during a customer survey. A quarter of the people loved him, but half hated him. According to the rules, such a project should end up in the trash. Many in the company are already relieved that this nonsense is out of their necks.
But Le Quément did not give up. Half of the negative reactions were unusual, but a quarter of the enthusiastic ones were so. That is not enough? Wouldn’t a quarter of the market share be enough for us? The only thing that was clear was that the Twingo has a distinctive and even polarizing character.
After careful consideration, he sent Director Lévy a short message with a philosophizing wordplay. “I believe the biggest risk for Renault is if it continues to avoid risk. Please make a personal decision between instinctive design and extinction marketing.” In Czech, we don’t have an expression for the opposite of instinct. However, the word extinct clearly refers to death and extinction.
Lévy gave the thumbs up and the rest is known history. All that remained was to choose a name. Twingo is a combination of twist, swing and tango dances, at the same time it suggests riding in twos. Short, playful, pregnant, international.
An extremely short nose with a steeply sloping hood helped to make great use of space. The engine ready for the Clio did not fit under it, and before they could develop a new engine, the Twingo had to make do with an old-fashioned OHV unit from the sixties for the first three years.
At its highest point, the body was, on the other hand, a substantial six centimeters higher than the Clio. This was one of the keys to the surprising interior space. Four adults sat comfortably inside. There wasn’t much space left for suitcases, but when driving with two people, a revolutionary innovation at the time, the sliding rear bench, solved it.
In addition, the front and rear seats could be folded into cargo or bed configuration. Then you could move furniture in Twingo or go for a weekend without accommodation. The practical aspect was crowned by the visual playfulness of the interior with color contrasting elements. Even all the usual year indicators were missing, a digital speedometer and a few warning lights were enough.
Success came immediately, after only four years a million cars were driving around Western Europe. The category, which until now was dominated by the Fiat Panda, has been completely taken over by the Twingo. As a reliable and affordable motorization, it was also produced in Colombia, Uruguay and Taiwan.
By this time, Patrick Le Quément was amused to read in the newspaper that the tremendous success of the innovative concept was clear to everyone at the car company from day one. Everyone liked him from the beginning and the whole team pulled together. “I immediately remembered the Soviet rewriting of history and the disappearance of people from photographs”, laughs jovially today the man who will celebrate his eightieth birthday in two years.
The last admirable feature of the Twingo was that it refused to age. It managed to simplify the essence of mobility to the core with such grace that it was functionally suitable and aesthetically pleasing for fourteen years.
And he still likes it. The arrival of the second generation in 2007 was mainly required by accident protection standards. In that sense, the original Twingo was just a child of the eighties. However, the successor could no longer be so short. As can be seen from the comparison of the two barrier tests, the entire increase in dimensions fell on the deformation zones.
The creators could not breathe so much originality into the second or third generation, and they also did not achieve comparable success with them. In the following decades, the mini-class was dominated by the Fiat 500 and the Panda, while Renault had more luck with the Scénik.
