As some of you will know, I sold a very nice, low-mile, blood-orange 1972 911T back in January. I intended to buy another 911 right away, probably an SC, but couldn't find anything I liked in my low price bracket. So I got impatient and bought... a Renault. In fact, I bought three - I thought I could make something of the first two, but they were a decade beyond screwed.
The car below is my 'third-time lucky'. I've owned it since March. It has 38k on the clock and is in amazing shape, like the 911.
I'm a German car person at heart, but I got interested in Renault 8s in particular when I saw a Gordini in Portugal just over a year ago. I knew I wanted one, but not enough to actually buy one. Then I kind of lost the plot and bought one anyway. Two weeks after buying it, Paul Ferryman invited me on a trackday at Goodwood. I chopped the springs, put on my Arai, and hammered-out some very frantic, scary laps.
Soon after, I bought some proper adapters to fit lowering springs, then fitted a harness and the Momo Prototipo from the 911. I also put it on 13x5 and 13x6 Gotti Bimetal replicas. Like the spring adapters, they were built by a bloke in a shed in Cheshire - there is no Pelican Parts for early Renaults.
Shortly after I got the car, a friend gave me a GT Turbo motor. It was junk, but it gave me the idea of turbo'ing the car, so I bought another which I am currently rebuilding. I'm having problems at the moment - I rebuilt the head only to find no.1 spark plug socket was mashed to bits and unrepairable, so I've had to buy another. Once complete, the GTT should go straight in on the existing mounts, giving somewhere between 120 and 160 bhp to 700kg of car.
Before I fit the engine, I want to servo the brakes and build an uprated gearbox using the internals from a 16TS box, because the current one will explode if you try to run any sort of torque through it.
How does it compare to the 911? The 911 was so obviously designed by perfectionists and over-engineered by craftsmen. The 8 was designed by madmen and built like crap by tightfisted industrialists. The build-quality is appalling, the panel fit is tragic, the engineering is right to the edge of what-you-can-get-away-with. But in the same way a Porsche isn't just a great car because it's designed and built well, the Renault isn't a bad car because of these things. It's exciting to drive, looks totally mental and invokes some sort of irrational positive emotional response that means I just absolutely love it.
I've grown-up fascinated by Porsche, and I will have another, but right now this strange contraption is everything I want out of my car addiction...
Who'd-a though it?
