It is not usual for generalist brands to go off the path laid out by the marketing departments. Ah, the market… always the market. Numbers rule, lose imagination. But sometimes things happen differently.
We are in the month of March 1995 at the Geneva Motor Show, the great event of the automobile industry where the brands exhibit their latest innovations or prototypes that foreshadow future models. At the Renault stand, the public is surprised. There has long been talk of a simple, pure little convertible conceived along the lines of the Mazda MX-5, also known as the Miata in some markets. But what appears before his eyes overcomes any preconceived idea.
Solve the Dieppe problem
But let’s go back to starting point of this story. Renault, since 1972, has taken over Alpine. Now, in the 1990s, the Dieppe factory is going through difficult times, let us think that, in 1993, only 41 Alpine A 610s were manufactured and 30 the following year. There is a risk of total closure. Christian Contzen, Renault Sport strongman and manager of the Alpine factory, has been looking for a solution for some time to save the jobs of his two hundred employees. At Renault they plan to create a successor to the Alpine A 610, but Contzen does not agree, he wants to conceive something very different from the A 610, and he contacts Claude Fior, a former motorcycle racer who has developed economical “school” single-seaters to train future pilots in the Nogaro circuit, using stock car parts. Another key figure in the birth of the future model is Daniel Charles, one of the fathers of the cheap Campus Formula, where pilots such as Oriol Servia, Romain Dumas, Franck Montagny, Sebastien Bourdais or Nakajima will be “born”.
Contzen knows that a great structure has many problems when it comes to developing a car that is out of the ordinary. For his project, it is necessary to go another way and so he directly entrusts Fior with the development of an aluminum chassis, a material that he knows very well from racing motorcycles. Fior and Charles work hand in hand and finally a first prototype rolls around the track of the Nógaro circuit, next to Fior’s workshop, with a provisional bodywork.
The final bodywork will be designed by the Tecnocentro design office. Christian Contzen is a close friend of Patrick Le Quément, at the head of the diamond firm’s design. Le Quément chooses the young Benoît Jacob, who has already designed the Campus.
Two prototypes are presented to Louis Schweitzer, CEO of Groupe Renault: one under the Renault Sport name and one under the Alpine name. Schweitzer is in love with the Spider “Alpine”. At that moment, Christian Contzen leans over to his boss and asks: “What is the use of spending hundreds of millions every year to win in Formula 1 and promote the Renault Sport brand, if we launch this Spider under the Alpine brand? Schweitzer listens and agrees: the Spider will not be an Alpine.
The weight conundrum
And so in Geneva 95, the public discovers the Spider Renault Sport, definitely so baptized. It is a pure roadster, a two-seater without any kind of hood and, in principle, without a windshield, just a windshield. After the two occupants, the engine is in a central transverse position, a mechanic from the 2-liter Clio Williams with 150 hp and 185 Nm of torque, for only 790 kilos, or at least that is what its file says.
The engine was located in a transverse central position
A curious data. We have said 790 kilos, but this weight will increase to 930 kilos when the Spider is marketed in 1996. Its weight increase is due to a series of decisions imposed by Renault in terms of safety, and because in Dieppe they did not know how to make a body of fiber less than 5 mm thick with no defects noted. In addition, the effective windshield conceived by Fior (a kind of inverted wing) is not liked by Renault, and the final version weighs twenty kilos more…
The chassis is made up of a central cell and a cradle at the front made of 3 mm thick aluminum profiles welded together. At the rear, the engine and gearbox assembly, and the anchors for the suspensions, single-seater type, were located on another subframe. It measures 3.79 meters long, 1.83 meters wide and only 1.25 meters high.
A pure roadster, with two seats and without a hood in its first version
Inside, no heating, no space to store an object, there is only room for what is strictly necessary. Thus, a small steering wheel, two bucket seats and three small clocks before the driver’s eyes (revolution counter, water temperature and oil pressure), as well as a small box with digital information (to know the speed among a few other data). And at the feet a superb set of pedals, adjustable by means of a small wheel under the steering wheel. The driver’s seat is also adjustable: without a good position, good driving is inconceivable.
sensations
On the move, the Spider produces a unique feeling of freedom. Above 40 km/h, despite the absence of a windscreen, the windshield channels the air over the head, allowing you to ride without protection. But as another car could throw gravel, it is advisable to wear protective glasses, even a helmet. Later, in 1997, a true windshield would be available and as an option, a hood reduced to the minimum expression.
To replace the missing windshield, it had a sophisticated windshield.
The very direct steering, the efficient brakes from the Alpine A 610 (non-assisted but very powerful), the quick and precise shift control and a very efficient behavior, made driving (or should we say piloting) enjoyable on the road? ) to the extreme. We are talking about unique sensations, about something that figures are unable to express. But, in any case, know that the official figures indicated a top speed of 230 km/h and 6.9 seconds used to go from 0 to 100 km/h.
Until 1999, around one thousand eight hundred units were manufactured, to which must be added the sixty of the Spider Trophy, equipped with a 180 hp engine and sequential gearbox, a competition version destined for the Renault Elf European Cup races.
A brief life of one of those models that is difficult to forget, at least for those for whom a car is something more than “a mobility solution”.