Few cars have so many needles in immediate need of threading.
Andrew TrahanSure, people crashed these. You can almost smell it. It was not the car’s fault, more the blame of anyone who climbed into this framework, this half-pint spazgoblin, expecting to be handed anything short of a weapon minus safeties. In stock form, on appropriate tires (our test car wore Michelin TRX reproductions, a copy of the Turbo 2’s 1980s factory rubber), there is no evil here, just distilled, jittery honesty—no front tire if you’re brainless (too much throttle at the wrong time, or mistiming the boost, which isn’t always consistent) and no rear tire if you’re smart (too much throttle at the right time, a gram too much trailed brake, a breathe off throttle before the car’s haunches have settled). The only time the R5 is ever short on anything you actually need is when you’re thinking too much or not enough.

Naturally, that’s the hard part. And for what it’s worth, all of the above seemed like small deal to me—competent in a race car, but no genius—until I imagined doing it at nine-tenths on a public road, or in the wet.

I could probably stick that landing for a bit, God willing, absent distraction. If somebody happened to turn on the radio in the middle of it, I would probably launch the whole party off a cliff.
Andrew TrahanAndrew TrahanAndrew TrahanWhen R5s were new, people tweaked them. Generally for more grip, to make the car “safer,” which usually meant more tire. More tire in a car like this often adds roll understeer and makes limit behavior more dicey, adding stability while causing the car to feel less alive. Rebalancing the suspension to compensate would inevitably mean adding stiffness, and then you’d lose the lovely stock feel, this middle ground between happy ride comfort and rabid road weasel.

Call me crazy, but I vote rideweasel.

Few cars have been so blatantly aimed at those who know exactly what they’re doing. Given a fab shop and a desire to calm things down, you could swap in a larger, less schizo motor, maybe add tire, truly dial the suspension to modern standards, stretch the wheelbase a smidge. But at that point, you’d basically have the Clio V6. And that, as they do not say in France, is a whole other kettle of le fish.