Renault 5 Turbo
Why 3.5: Renault gutted a hatchback and mid-mounted a turbo four to homologate it for Group 4 rally, and the resulting width, turbo lag and tail-happy balance make it feel like nothing else wearing a Renault badge. Never sold new in the US, and values have climbed hard as the homologation-special crowd discovered it.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The 1.4 sits where the rear seat was, so induction, wastegate and gear whine all arrive from behind your shoulders. But the engine itself is a pushrod Cleon-Fonte four and the turbo swallows the top end. Character rather than tone.
4-cylinder · turbocharged · 7,000 rpm redline · rated 6.5 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €17k (1980) → €152k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Built before ISOFIX existed, so there are no anchor points at all. A child seat here is a seatbelt installation in the only passenger seat there is.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
Renault took its cheapest hatchback, threw out the back seat and the rear glass, and mid-mounted a turbocharged four where the groceries used to go — a homologation special built purely to win rally stages. The width alone announces what it is before the turbo ever spools, and the lag itself becomes part of the character once you learn to drive around it. Values sat flat for decades before climbing hard over the last five years, catching up to the Group B-adjacent reputation the car earned firsthand. Forbidden Fruit and Homologation Hero both fit; nothing else does a mid-engine hatchback quite like this.