I like driving in my car! (Part Four)

During the time I had my red Ford Escort I remember driving round the one-way system in Kingston-upon-Thames, and I was suddenly overtaken at great speed by a small car, the driver of which looked as if he was about 12 years old. The car in question was a Renault 5 GT Turbo, a car which I was aware of but had never really given much though to, but I can honestly say that it was this brief moment when that spotty teenager whizzed past me in one that prompted me to decide on the spot that I wanted to have a GT Turbo.

Whilst I’m being honest, I must also admit that once I started to notice the little French cars around me a bit more, I came to love what they looked like rather than how fast they were. When I finally drove one it did make me far more conscious of just what they were capable of performance wise, but up until that point I just thought they looked so cool. The original Renault 5 had become an iconic car fairly quickly after its launch in the early 70’s, not only in France but also in the UK, but by the early 80’s the original design had become very dated, and so a new model was launched which retained all the character of the original but in a far more attractive and up-to-date package. I’d always thought that this new model really encapsulated what great car design was all about, and even to this day I think it still has a fresh and modern look, whether it be a basic Campus model or the range-topping GT Turbo. The thing I really liked about the Turbo was that it managed to look the part without being over-the-top. All the body modifications were very subtle; there were discreet side skirt mouldings running along the bottom of the car and following the outline of the wheel arches, a small roof spoiler at the back and a slightly lowered front bumper with a small spoiler and built-in fog lamps, and that was about it. The early models still had black bumpers and skirts, but on the revised model from 1987 onwards everything was colour-coded which showed off the car’s lines beautifully. The alloy wheels were also subtle enough to give the car an edge without attracting scorn from the mouldy fig brigade. This new model was also the first car (that I can think of at least) to feature the now-familiar tall rear light clusters running up each side of the car rather than the usual arrangement of lights running across the rear of the car at a low level.

Once I’d decided that I was going to buy a GT Turbo, I began to look around the obvious places and found a nice example at a local dealer in Wimbledon. It was a metallic steel grey model with all the usual bits and pieces on it, but at the end of the day I couldn’t justify the £3K+ price tag, especially as I now had a hefty insurance premium to consider. The next example I looked at was also for sale from a dealer of sorts, but I’d

gone from one extreme to another; from a well-established main-road showroom in Wimbledon to a backstreet lock-up in south-east London. This particular ‘dealer’ was a specialist in second-hand parts for GT Turbos and other sporting Renaults, and happened to sell a few examples of the cars now and then. Looking back at the situation now I really should have just turned round and gone home as soon as I saw the place; it was as if I’d stepped into Steptoe’s yard but on a day when Albert and Harold were having a particularly intense spring-clean. There were car parts lying all over the place, with a couple of breaking cars lying against the yard wall. The premises were not so much a couple of garages as a crumbling lean-to and a garden shed, and the proprietor was your archetypal shifty looking car salesman. What on earth was I thinking? I’ll tell you what I was thinking, I was thinking about how utterly lovely and beautiful the car sitting in the yard was. A few minutes earlier I’d passed a lovely GT Turbo in metallic blue (a rare colour choice for the model) in a side road adjacent to the road where the garage was situated, and had got all excited as I’d assumed that it had come from the place that I was approaching. But when I saw the car I had come to look at, my heart really was trying to jump out of my chest. It was a beautiful shiny black and in pristine condition, and it just seemed to be sitting there smiling at me; a vision of perfection in amongst the dreadful mess that surrounded it. It was like all the butterflies in the stomach you’ve ever experienced rolled into one, and I was just jumping all over the place with delight and enthusiasm. I made contact with the owner of the garage and asked him the usual barrage of questions, and he then started the car and lifted up the bonnet.

When he started the engine I must admit that it did sound rather like a diesel, but I had no idea what they were supposed to sound like and so didn’t give it much thought. Anyway, there was no smoke coming out of the exhaust and everything under the bonnet appeared to be clean and ship-shape, and so I asked him if we could take it out for a spin. Sitting in the car for the first time was a strange experience, as it was totally different to either of the Escort Ghia’s I’d been used to. Although it wasn’t spartan as such, it certainly wasn’t luxurious by any means, and the quality of all the materials was of a far lower standard than the Fords. All around me were swathes of cheap black and grey plastic and low-grade carpet, although I loved the carpet because it was bright red! What I did love about the interior was its modern feel. It was all angular and very ‘of its time’, though it was very well laid out, albeit with the traditional Renault 5 trait of the radio being mounted very low on the centre console and facing upwards.

We pulled out of the yard and onto the residential street and I eventually worked my way back onto the main road, though I didn’t know the area and was being given directions by the garage owner. Once I’d found a clear stretch of road I floored the accelerator whilst in second gear, and I was instantly thrown back in my seat as the car took off. If I’d had any reservations about the GT Turbo up until this point, then they immediately disappeared from my mind at this moment. From then on I a had a permanent smile on my face whenever I drove a GT Turbo, except of course when it was playing up but I’ll come to that later. As is now pretty obvious, aside from the showroom model which I didn’t even get as far as test driving, this car was for all intents and purposes the first GT Turbo I looked at. And, rather foolishly, this is the one that I bought.

Once I’d handed over the money and sorted out the relevant paperwork, I drove the car home with my mate in tow who’d given me a lift in his own car (which was in fact the green Escort which had once been my car, but that’s just confusing an already boring story) and I was on cloud nine. Whilst the Turbo would only really come into its own when being driven on a clear country road, it was still good fun in town, especially at the obligatory traffic light burn-ups. I’d never really got into this game in any of my previous cars, mostly because they weren’t fast enough, but the Renault was so effortless in its take-off from standstill that it just made you want to do it all the time. As the turbo only cut in at 3000 rpm, the best time to utilise the car’s power was in second gear whilst doing around 20 mph and between 1500 and 2000 rpm, so that flooring the car at this point would give you the initial but very brief surge of the engine under its own power, followed very quickly by the turbo which would then catapult the car forward.

Getting used to the car was quite scary at first, as you really needed to grip hold of the steering wheel tight to keep control of it when flying around, but I soon got to grips with it (ho, ho!), although the power and associated sensation never ceased to amaze me right up until the last time I drove it. The seats in the car were very supportive with bolsters in all the right places to keep you in your seat whilst the car was throwing you around, and it had a really good driving position which maximised the driving experience. The instrument panel had a natty little turbo gauge on it just below the rev counter, and this would come to life sharply every time the turbocharger engaged. Unfortunately, you could simultaneously watch the fuel gauge needle go in the opposite direction fairly quickly, as the GT Turbo was not the most efficient of cars. I didn’t really care about that: this wasn’t a car to be plodding around in like a granddad, this was a car that demanded to be driven. There was no point worrying about the fuel economy; to do so would be missing the point entirely. The gear change in the Turbo was just about as sweet as you can get with any car. Yes, the clutch was rather heavy, but the gear stick itself was nice and stubby and the shift was quick and responsive; there was no flailing about trying to get it into gear as is the case with a lot of cars. Obviously Renault had paid special attention to the gear change when engineering the turbo, knowing full well that a car of this type required a slick gearbox to cope with the need to change gear a lot more than normal. The only thing they didn’t think too much about was when they converted the original French left-hand drive car to right-hand drive for the UK. This resulted in the clutch cable going round far too many corners in the engine compartment to get from the pedal to the clutch, resulting in it wearing very quickly. The cable snapped with alarming regularity, usually around every 3-6 months, and I soon became used to replacing it. It was a nightmare of a job, having to raise the front of the car on axle stands and a combination of groping around underneath and in the engine compartment to enable the old cable to be removed and the new one installed, but not without the removal of most of the skin on my right hand in the process due to the extraordinarily awkward and cramped location of the cable passing through the bulkhead from the foot well to the engine compartment.

For a time the Renault behaved itself and I had lots of fun driving it. In fact I was having such fun one day that the police decided quite rightly that I ought to slow down a bit, and gave me three shiny points to put on my licence. Which was nice. It was purely down to some long drawn out frustration on my part when I was stuck behind some old granddad for miles and miles who was driving his lovely Nissan Sunny at about 35mph along a country road. We were on the way to a gig near Guildford, and I had no opportunity to overtake him until the road eventually widened out into a dual carriageway, at which point I immediately put my foot down and whizzed past him. I really should have eased off at this point but I felt that I had to get the frustration out of my system. It was my mate sitting next to me who actually spotted the police further down the road, but unfortunately it was too late. When they eventually clocked me I was doing 92mph in the 70mph zone. I’m not going to try to justify my actions now because I know full well I was in the wrong, but I’m afraid that I wasn’t quite so conscious of it at the time…….