“My challenge is to say nothing is impossible,” says Dacia’s head of design, David Durand. “I tell my designers, constraints mean creativity.”  And when Dacia decided to enter the hyper-competitive (and profitable) C SUV segment with the Bigster, Durand’s team knew that they had to keep costs and diversity to a minimum. They started from the premise that the Bigster would be the same as the new small Duster (launched earlier this year) up until the B pillar. Then, they sought to create a credible, high-performing compact SUV that would start at less than 25,000 euros.

“With the Duster, we know the B SUV segment very well,” Durand said in an interview in Berlin, where the Bigster was revealed to the press ahead of the Paris auto show Oct. 14-20. “For the C SUV segment, it’s not the same story. Nobody is waiting for Dacia, and we have to convince them we have a serious offer.” Serious, for Durand, means the Bigster has a strong, vertical front end; large, simple volumes (and one of the largest cargo spaces in its class), and the ability to fit up to 19-inch wheels under aggressively flared and plastic-cladded fenders. The Bigster stretches out the Renault Group’s CMF-B platform up to the compact class. The Bigster is 4.57 meters long, 25 cm more than the Duster; 1.71 meters high (+5 cm vs. the Duster) and has a 2.7 meter-long wheelbase (+4 cm).

Durand and his team did more than add longer doors to the Duster to create the Bigster. Mindful of retaining the correct proportions, some of the new length is in a longer overhang and extended rear side windows. Rear seat passengers benefit from generous knee room as a result; and the rear cargo space is 667 liters, 150 liters more than the Duster. “It was all about getting a good balance,” Durand said. If the proportions aren’t right at first glance, he said, the design loses credibility. Fine-turning the proportions of the Bigster also saves money, he said. “When you don’t have good proportions, you need to put on ‘makeup’ to hide a big overhang, for example.”

But that ‘makeup’ comes at a cost, he said, in extra parts, chrome, contour lines, “and you start to make the car look busy. That’s not our approach.” In the end, will the Bigster persuade buyers in the C SUV segment, to give Dacia a chance? Durand sees the Bigster, in particular, attracting those who now have a B segment SUV or even a used midsize car. “They’ll say, OK, this offering from Dacia, it’s big, it’s well designed, it’s serious, it gives me everything I need,” he said. “Maybe it doesn’t have this feature or that feature, but honestly for the price, I don’t care.”

Alpine’s first new car in seven years, the A290 small EV, is not only a “reinvention” of the hot hatch, but it will be an entry point to the reinvention of the Renault Group sports-car brand. The A290 is based on the Amp-R platform that underpins the new Renault 5, and the body in white is nearly identical, but Alpine Chief Designer Antony Villain and his team have taken care to give it an Alpine identity.

“We’re bringing the Renault 5 into the Alpine world,” Villain said in an interview. With the idea of an iconic hot hatchback firmly in mind, like a Peugeot 205 GTi or the Renault 5 Turbo, Alpine designers first focused on an aggressive stance. The track has been widened by 60 mm, and 19-inch wheels (one inch bigger than the Renault 5) are tucked under flared arches. “The wheels are really pushed to the four corners,” Villain said. “It’s like a skateboard.”

The front and rear bumpers have been redesigned, and the rear doors with a scallop pattern are unique to the A290. Villain called the doors “a cool ingredient that reminds you of rally cars from the past like the Renault 5 Turbo 2. “We call it the Alpine swoosh,” he said. Inside, the A290 is distinctly an Alpine rather than a Renault, starting with a Formula One-inspired steering wheel with two aluminum controls: A red “overtake” button gives a brief boost of extra battery power, while a blue dial controls the strength of regenerative braking.

Deeply bolstered seats and a center console with push-button shift controls reflect the A290’s sports-car aspirations. Drivers will also have a custom digital user experience with, for instance, the silhouettes of a mountain. The goal is to create a closer connection between the driver and the road, Villain said. The HMI also includes detailed telemetrics and coaching, with a number of challenges meant to improve driving skills. “It’s important to reach new customers. This car is a way to enter into the brand in a more affordable way but with all the DNA of the brand,” Villain said. As head of Alpine design since the brand’s rebirth in 2016, Villain has been refining its design philosophy, but always keeping to three main pillars. The first is inspiration from the mountains, because Alpine’s founder, Jean Redele, was thinking of small, nimble cars driving on a mountain road rather than name the brand after himself, unlike other tuners in the 1950s.

The second is a racing heritage, which means form follows function, with lightweight materials, a visible structure and beauty that is found in technical details, Villain said. The last is a sense of French savoir-faire, which he described as cars that are both chic sporty. The A290, then, is just a taste of how Alpine is carving out a new identity with future cars such as the GT SUV, the next A110 and the A310 2+2. “We’re using these pillarsthe A290 today, and the next cars and concept cars we will show will have more and more of these ingredients,” Villain said.

Some designs are intentional from the beginning, while others come from intuition and inspiration. The new “retrofuturistic” Renault 5 small electric car is one of the latter. In late 2019, Renault designers working on special projects came up with an idea for a future small electric car. They produced a design study that drew inspiration from the original Renault 5 — but with the automaker still dealing with the fallout from the Carlos Ghosn scandal, their idea stayed in obscurity.

A bright orange colour
Then in early July 2020, former Seat CEO Luca de Meo became head of Renault Group, and one of his first acts was to visit the design center in Guyancourt, outside of Paris. There, he saw the bright orange Renault 5 design study. As de Meo wrote recently: “Suddenly, as I was walking around, I saw a life-size model that looked surprisingly like an R5. For me, it was absolutely clear. I made the decision straight away: ‘That’s it exactly! Try to put this design on a platform with four wheels. It has to be an all-electric car. We’re going to build the Renault 5!’ ”

Amazing instinct
The new Renault 5 was unveiled to the public as a concept just months later, in January 2021, as a cornerstone of de Meo’s “Renaulution“ strategy. Three years later, the Renault 5 has appeared in production form, nearly identical to that orange design study — a true “show car for the street.” “He’s very intuitive,” Gilles Vidal, Renault design director, said of de Meo, who as head of marketing at Fiat in the 2000s championed the retro-design Fiat 500, which has been in continuous production for more than 15 years with few changes. “His first instinct is always right; that’s quite amazing. He knows what works and what doesn’t.”

A popular icon trigging emotions
Vidal and de Meo are adamant that the Renault 5 is not a “retro” design, but it draws on the public’s affection for the original, which sold more than nine million examples from 1972-1996. “It’s not nostalgic, it’s not vintage,” Vidal said. Even if it triggers emotions from such a popular icon, “We wanted it to be futuristic at the same time.” The new Renault 5 mixes and matches inspirations from the original and variants such as the Super 5 and Turbo. Tall vertical taillights, for example, are from the Super 5; the H-shaped bucket seats, muscular stance and rear roof spoiler are from the Turbo, while the general shape of the front fenders and the friendly “eye” headlights, the flat dashboard with visible stitching lines and the sloping hatchback are from the first generation.

An eye-catching object
Vidal describes these as critical details that make the Renault 5 an “eye-catching object” that will surprise and delight owners. But even these elements have been pushed into the future: The hood vent that once let air escape from a gasoline engine has been transformed into a lighted “5” that shows the state of battery charge, with each of five bars representing 20 percent

Evoking the 70s
“The car can express itself on its own,” creating a bond with its driver, Vidal said, describing the overall feel of the Renault 5 as “pop flair.” That impression is strengthened by two bold exterior colors, Pop Yellow and Pop Green that evoke the early 70s model. For the driver, Renault has designed a special graphical user interface based on characters that slant forward at the same 28-degree angle as the bottom of the Renault “lozenge” logo, creating a sense of motion and momentum.

(Full article in A&D no. 266)

When Renault designed the “retrofuturistic” Renault 5 small EV (complete design story on Auto&Design no.266), it paid as close attention to the user interface as it did to the hatchback’s proportions, stance and interior. The reason? “The Renault 5 is an icon for Renault, so we wanted to do something special,” said Marie Guillaud-Blaise, lead designer experience at Renault Group. The goal was to make the car much more than an object to get from Point A to Point B, she said.

“Special” means that the Renault 5 has its own graphics, with more than 200 combinations of colors, patterns, densities and drive modes that users can customize their digital instrument panel and adjoining touch screen. “You can make the R5 your R5,” Guillaud-Blaise said. The Renault 5 interacts with drivers and passengers through the latest generation of the automaker’s OpenR-Link system, which is based on Google’s connected services such as Maps and voice assistant. Users can also download about 50 dedicated apps. Two screens — each 10 inches wide — are arranged horizontally in front of the driver, rather than the upside-down “L” shape of other recent Renault cars.

The screen in front of the driver conveys information about the vehicle, including speed in colorful alphanumeric characters rather than traditional dials, and a detailed 3D rendition of the car. The touch screen to the right is reserved for infotainment and comfort functions. The Renault 5 also marks the debut of Reno, Renault’s on-screen avatar that flits around the screen, responding to questions posed in natural language and offering suggestions for comfort, navigation and entertainment. Reno incorporates a friendly blue face, inside Renault’s yellow lozenge logo. Two hands float independently on either side of the avatar. “It’s somehow comforting to have something small to talk to,” Guillaud-Blaise said, describing Reno as a traveling companion that makes journeys easier and more pleasant.

Renault designers turned to another aspect of the lozenge when creating graphics for the user interface. The new, two-dimensional “nouvel R” logo that debuted in 2021 has a 28-degree diagonal angle, and the Renault 5 team used that figure throughout the graphics to convey speed, movement and dynamism. For example, state-of-charge bars lean forward by 28 degrees, as if thrusting themselves ahead of the driver. The graphics also make liberal use of the Renault 5’s “pop” colors, bright yellow and bright green, which recall the 1970s hues of the original Renault 5. Colors can be combined with 10 different patterns and four drive modes — Eco, Comfort, Sport and Perso — to create 224 possible combinations. This helps to make a personal connection between the car and driver, said Guillaud-Blaise and Renault design director Gilles Vidal. Another way to cement that connection is a lighted charge indicator on the hood in the shape of the number “5,” where an air vent was located on the original Renault 5. “The car can express itself on its own,” Vidal said. “It’s a real delight. That’s what gives spice to life.”