One Renault Sport Spider is a rare sight, and three together is almost unheard of outside of owners’ meets. We united a trio owners to find out what life is like with Renault’s quirky, oft-forgotten 1990s sports car.
Renault don’t do mid-engined cars often, but when they do, they don’t do it normally. Sometimes, they’ll rip out the back seats of a small hatchback, totally re-engineer it and give it wide hips and just a bit more power than it can handle, as they did with the 5 Turbo and the Clio V6. More recently, they revived the Alpine A110, building something with a singular focus on light weight, even as the likes of Lotus headed in the other direction.
Then, in the 1990s, when the company was releasing concept after avantgarde concept, something that looked like it was destined to stay on a motor show stand slipped through the cracks; something raw, uncompromising and almost certainly never to be repeated now by a major manufacturer chasing ever-slimmer profit margins. This was the Sport Spider, Renault’s forgotten roadster.
The Sport Spider was a major victim of poor timing. It launched in early 1996, just months before the Series 1 Lotus Elise, and it’s not hard to see why the two cars are so often compared. Both are sub-tonne, stripped back sports cars with four-cylinder engines from relatively humble origins – the original Elise used Rover’s 1.8-litre K-series, while the Renault had the 2.0-litre F7R engine from the Clio Williams.
In a raw statistical comparison, the Renault never stood a chance. The Spider may have had a chunk more power – 148bhp to the early Elise’s 118 – but it also weighed 930kg compared to the lithe Lotus’s 755kg. The car from Norfolk’s advantage became all the more apparent when more powerful derivatives quickly arrived. The Renault’s extra heft was despite it lacking certain creature comforts offered by the Lotus. Like, y’know, a roof. And windows. In fact, the Spider was such a stripped-back prospect that in left-hand drive markets, the windscreen was an optional extra.
History tells us that there was only room for one superlight mid-engined roadster in 1996. The Spider was always going to be a niche prospect for a major manufacturer like Renault. When production ended in 1999, something around 1700 road cars had been built, plus a further handful for use in the one-make Spider Trophy and Cup race series. The Elise, meanwhile, stuck around for 25 years, effectively carrying Lotus as a company until it went out of production in late 2021.
Objective things like this are a bit meaningless, though – cars should be about how they make the driver, the owner, feel. The Spider was something different, a brilliant curiosity. It made no compromises as a concept, but it didn’t sacrifice character and magnificent French weirdness – it came in vibrant colours, and it had scissor doors like it thought it was a Lamborghini.
Any Spider is a rare sight, especially in the UK. There are various estimates thrown around for the number of right-hand drive cars made, but none venture above 100, and it’s widely thought that 60 of these came to the UK. To see one of these cars out and about on British roads is unusual, so when we found out that three semi-regular customers of ours own them, we had to unite them on a sunny evening in the Yard.
It was also an opportunity to spend time around three Spiders in slightly different states – one stock, pristine and meticulously maintained; one with a few subtle tweaks; and one that’s a bit of a rolling project.
Firstly, the blue car. It’s owned by Paul, who’s had it since 1999 and is only the second owner. The first, a car collector with a garage full of Italian exotica, used it precisely once for a trip to Goodwood, so Paul bought it in effectively new condition. Since then, it’s been a faithful weekend toy, impeccably looked after and used for several jaunts to the south of France. The rear luggage rack is evidence of its road trip exploits.
“It’s like driving a go-kart,” says Paul. “It has no brake servo, it has no power steering, no heater, no carpets… it’s raw. It’s the most impractical car in the world, but the most fun to drive. It’ll never get sold. My son loves it, and he said ‘I’m having it, dad’.”
It seems to be the kind of car that gets under your skin like that. Ben, who owns the deep pearlescent yellow car, was searching for an entirely different quirky Renault, and when he ended up with the Spider in January 2023, he only planned on keeping it for a year or so. Instead, it’s quickly become something of a ‘forever car’ for him.
“I was looking for an Avantime,” he tells us. “I wanted something quirky, and I was trying to convince my wife that the Avantime was something quirky and practical.” The Spider ended up being something of an impulse purchase – funnily enough, in the depths of a British winter, the market for cars with no roof or windows is pretty buyer-friendly.
“I called the guy, saw the car, made an offer, and came back home and told my wife.” Thankfully for Ben, she saw it as a sensible purchase, as the market for Spiders is getting stronger and stronger.
“When I was a kid, my dad always had Renaults…” (Ben is French, and has the most wonderfully Gallic pronunciation – ‘Whhenno’) “…and I always loved Renaults of this era. It’s not about the performance or the driving experience; for me, I see cars more as art. I like the design, the noise, the emotions, the rarity… it could be driving like crap, and I wouldn’t care.”
Thankfully, it doesn’t drive like crap. Ben’s car is the one that’s had a few tweaks made. Visually, there’s that rather delectable set of satin grey OZ Racing alloys, wrapped in some sticky track-biased Toyo rubber. It’s also had its engine breathed on by K-Tec Racing in Dorset, arguably Britain’s leading Renaultsport specialist, lifting power to somewhere nearer 180bhp.
Ben’s car also has an interesting history. Like Paul’s it’s been driven between the UK and the south of France. This time it was by a previous owner, the particularly pan-European Enzo Scalzo, a UK-based Italian businessman who once owned the French-style bakery chain, Patisserie Valerie. Despite being a right-hand drive, UK-registered car, it has a 2012 service stamp from a specialist in Cannes.
Finally, Greg’s red car. Greg has two rules for buying a rare car: “Never buy a car from the coast, and never buy a car that’s been stored outside under a tarpaulin.” So, onto his Spider, which had been stored outside under a tarpaulin in the coastal town of Dover. Having acquired it in October 2022, he set about correcting some of the issues it had, and it passed its MOT the week before he brought it to the Yard. It’s an ongoing labour of love – we had to push Greg back into a parking space when he arrived, reverse gear still a little tricky to find.
“There was an episode of Top Gear back in the day that got me into wanting one, but things haven’t fallen into place until recently,” says Greg. “I haven’t had a garage, and you need somewhere to store it.” Now that it’s on the road, Greg is spending the summer enjoying the raw thrills it offers, while simultaneously working away on getting it back to its former glory.
Clearly, all three of these owners have a deep love for the unconventional when it comes to cars, so what else do they own? Paul has a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback in Highland Green – in other words, the Bullitt car – and a 1955 Lambretta scooter, of which he’s also the second owner.
Ben, meanwhile, uses a Mercedes CLS Shooting Brake day to day, and also has a 993 Porsche 911 Carrera, which he describes as a childhood hero car. He splits his time between the UK and Paris, and when in the French capital, runs around in a first-gen Renault Twingo, the doe-eyed city car that was never sold in RHD markets but is a cult hero nonetheless.
And Greg? He might have the ultimate leftfield two-car solution, with Jaguar’s genre-defying EV, the I-Pace, doing daily duties while the Renault is a weekend toy.
All that remains is to get out and about in this trio of Spiders, to find out what they’re like, from a passenger perspective at least, on a perfectly bright, warm summers’ evening. Ducking under the scissor doors, the entry process isn’t the most elegant, but once you’re settled into the cosseting Recaro bucket seat, you find a bare-bones but surprisingly roomy cabin – certainly sitting two abreast in here is a lot more comfortable than in an Elise, or even a contemporary MX-5.
They don’t feel particularly quick, but that’s not what these cars are about. The unavoidable exposure to the elements and the raucous four-pot buzzing away behind your head make it one of those cars that amplify all the senses, even at low speeds. On a country road, they’re clearly an involving, spritely car to drive. Most importantly though, they make the occupants smile, and when we bumble through little villages as a colourful trio, the white of the French tricolore swapped out for bright yellow, passers-by smile too. And one of the best things a car can do is bring joy to everyone that sees it.
