How Renault 5 inspired the automotive industry
"How Renault 5 inspired the automotive industry"
The Renault 5 was one of the earliest cars to use molded plastic bumpers (Pontiac’s Endura bumpers were earlier) and while that’s important, it’s not the materials of these bumpers that make them significant.
What’s significant is that the bumpers were designed in such a way that they formed the front lower part of the front wheel arches and the trailing edge of the rear wheel arches. That’s not how cars were usually built back around 1972.
All-metal wheel arches in the usual bodywork, tacked-on bumpers. This was the norm then, and well into the 1980s.
By the 1990s, though, things were changing. Nearly every car was becoming more like the Renault 5 in this one specific way.
It’s pretty much standard practice now, the Renault 5 was the first car produced in real quantities to come up with this extremely clever idea.
Renault 5 was the car that changed automotive design in a huge and yet quiet way.
Debashish S Neupane
