Not many people even know that the Renault Twingo exists, and most of those who do are journalists. When this little rascal came out in 2014, it looked like a mini Porsche on paper, but the real-world handling was nothing but a disappointment.
For a bit of clarification, the Twingo is co-developed with the Smart car and has a rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive platform. However, this was picked just to make it a short city car.
The Twingo's preview concept looked like the iconic Renault 5 Turbo. Instead of the V6, engineers were only allowed to install a 1-liter 3-cylinder with about 70 horsepower. There was also a 0.9-liter turbo, but only a few folks picked the expensive setup.
Infuriatingly, Renault installed the most diligent electronic nannies ever, and it also rode very high. So drifting the rear-wheel-drive Twingo proved impossible. But a guy from Poland did what nobody else could.
He calls his little project The Dumbest Drift Project, which is both accurate and very funny. The video he put together is honestly refreshing, as it's got a bunch of meme references.
Turning the Twingo into a drift car starts with installing a special switch which makes the nannies shut up. Unless we're mistaken, using that also means you have no stability control, so rolling over is a real possibility. The tiny turbo engine also gets software remapping to make more power. This looks like the GT model, so it's probably been boosted from 110 to about 125 hp. That's still no Toyota Supra!
One of the cheapest mods you can do when building a drift car is welding the diff. This stops one wheel from slipping and losing all the power for no reason. You could also use a mechanical diff, but that's both expensive and impractical in some random, strangely-engineered French city car. Besides the videos of the dumb drift car, we've also embedded a Fifth Gear review which explains what the Twingo is all about.
Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida. Full profile
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