Gorgeous retro rally concept reinvents a legendary piece of wizardry

Renault just gave one of its most beloved nameplates a jolt of electricity. The Renault 8 Gordini Concept reimagines the 1964 rally icon as a two-seat electric coupe with 270 hp (201 kW), swapping the family sedan's four doors for a low, wide body that looks ready for the 21st century.

The original Renault 8 Gordini, nicknamed "la Gorde," arrived in 1964 and was a genuine oddity for its time. It was a rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive sedan tuned by Amédée Gordini, an engineer so skilled at coaxing power from small engines that colleagues called him "the wizard." He reportedly worked straight from the milling machine rather than a drawing board, telling machinists how to cut parts and only sketching blueprints afterward. By 1966, Renault added a five-speed gearbox, pushing output to 110 hp (82 kW) and a claimed top speed of 109 mph (175 km/h).

That car became a rally staple, training a generation of drivers, including the French legend Jean Ragnotti, and stamping its double white stripe into motorsport folklore. Three straight wins at the Tour de Corsica between 1964 and 1966 carried rally fever into Belgium, Portugal, and Spain.

Priced at nearly double a standard R8, it was a status symbol for young drivers with cash to spare, yet common enough that nobody looked twice. For many Europeans in the late 90s, myself included, the memory isn't of some exotic collectible but of that blue paint and white stripe blending into the everyday streetscape.

The new concept looks gorgeous, and unlike Renault's earlier reboots – the R17 restomod done with designer Ora Ïto and the Renault 5 Diamant art car made with Pierre Gonalons – this one carries no outside collaborator. The company says the design came from an internal competition at Renault Design that drew more than 300 sketches, eventually narrowed to two scale models that were merged into the final shape.

The styling leans into the café racer ethos borrowed from custom motorcycle culture: strip away the unnecessary and let the mechanicals speak. The hood now lifts off in one piece with no visible shut line, and the old chrome side molding has been folded into the bodywork as a sculpted crease instead of a bolted-on trim piece. Up front, six round headlights sit inside a V-shaped nose; at the rear, the lights sit nearly flush with the bodywork.

Heritage details are woven in rather than pasted on. The Gordini script recreates the grooved lettering of the 1964 badge, and a new eight-segment "8" emblem nods to the original's design language. The double white stripe, purely cosmetic on the 1964 car, now functions as an organizing design element that aligns the windshield-base grille and even continues onto the dashboard.

The paint, described as a modern take on the historic Bleu de France, layers mother-of-pearl over a blue-tinted binder for extra depth. Inside, plastic gives way to brushed aluminum and Alcantara upholstery – a synthetic suede-like fabric– and the classic circular dials are reborn as digital displays set into a horizontal aluminum strip.

It also keeps the rear-wheel-drive layout from the original model but drops the practicality entirely. At 4.12 m (13.5 ft) long, 1.88 m (6.2 ft) wide, and just 1.27 m (4.2 ft) tall, it's a squat, two-door shape that rides on noticeably different wheel sizes front to rear: 19-inch (48.3 cm) up front and 20-inch (50.8 cm) at the back. Renault says that size gap is deliberate, meant to visually pull the eye toward the rear axle and reinforce the sense of rear-wheel drive.

"The decision to make the rear wheels larger creates a visual sense of momentum: a nod to the rear layout that was the hallmark of the hugely enjoyable ride delivered by the original," said Alexandre Malval, Renault's VP of design.

The concept is set to debut on September 24 at Renault's Carwalk event, before heading to the Paris Motor Show from October 12–18. It's a one-off, part of a five-year pattern of Renault reviving names from its 128-year history as it prepares to open the Renault Collections museum in Flins, expected in roughly 15 months, though the company hasn't locked in a firm date.

Renault is careful to frame this as a style exercise rather than a preview of a production model. Whether an electric, rear-wheel-drive Gordini ever reaches showrooms remains an open question. For now, the electric "la Gorde" will only exist in concept form and in my wishlist.

Source: Renault