Renault 5 - long-term review

Well, this is rather exciting. Welcome to Renault’s Douai factory in northern France, and more importantly, welcome to TG’s very own Renault 5. Yep, we’re embarking on life with the retro little city car to see whether it can justify its Top Gear Car of the Year win over a long-term, real-world test. Oh, and it was also crowned World Car of the Year for 2025, but obviously the TG award means much more. 

Seriously though, when was the last time a sub-£30,000 car created this much hype? Perhaps the Honda e in its early stages of development? But then that was a bit of a letdown when you realised it didn’t look quite as cool as the Urban EV concept, had barely enough range to reach the next charger, and it cost almost £40,000 by the time Honda pulled the plug in December 2023. So far, the Renault seems to have backed up its equally glorious throwback design with competitive pricing and a more than adequate drive, but some time on the TG fleet will be its toughest test yet.

So, to its birthplace. This is the factory that produced the original 5 between 1974 and 1984, but the square footage has actually shrunk in recent years as Renault sells off land and looks to make it more efficient and cost-effective. It now builds the new 5 and its rowdier Alpine A290 sibling on the same line as the larger Megane and Scenic, with Renault’s EV offshoot company Ampere referring to this more nimble plant – plus the new battery gigafactory across the road – as its ‘ElectriCity’. Vom. Still, there are 2,815 employees here currently, and the launch of the new R5 meant 415 extra jobs were created. Good news for the former coal mining region.

The Douai plant is currently chucking out 53 vehicles per hour on the morning shift and 26 per hour in the afternoon, but once the latter is fully up to speed (and when it also starts production of the new Nissan Micra and an upcoming Mitsubishi crossover) then roughly 700 new cars will depart the gates each day.

A quick peek behind the scenes (while wearing some truly terrible safety gear) would suggest demand for the 5 is high right now, and it looks like we’re not the only ones who wanted it in ‘yellow pop!’ paint. That’s Renault’s exclamation by the way, not ours. We’re told ‘midnight blue’ is currently the most popular colour in France, but from the look of the line on the day we collected our car, customers aren’t shying away from yellow or green. This is good news – the 5’s chunky stance and cutesy cartoon face certainly suit a brighter shade.

I’ll delve further into the actual spec of our car next month, but all you need to know for now is that we’ve gone for the mid-range Techno trim with the bigger battery and thus the more powerful motor. The paint cost £800 and personally I prefer the matching yellow roof to the contrast black one that Renault has used in most of its advertising. Paint is actually the only optional extra, so you’d be looking at a purchase price of £27,795 for this particular car, or just £221 per month on a two-year PCP deal. Granted you’ll need to stick a chunky £8,339 deposit down and you get a mileage limit of 6,000 per year to secure that monthly spend, but it still seems like huge value for money and is currently available with 0 per cent APR.

And yet, I’m naturally a bit of a sceptic, so despite the awards it has picked up so far, the 5 will have its work cut out to win me over. First up, a 200-mile trip to get back home to London…