As a footnote to this slightly crazy journey into rare turbo Renaults, I must touch on the almost-made-it Laguna Biturbo Hartge. Even if you're a European who can actually get their hands on a Phase 1 Laguna quite easily, you might not be familiar with it - because it never went into series production. Information is nonexistant in English (thank goodness for Google Translate!) but some basic info can be found. The Laguna Biturbo was to follow the Safrane Biturbo, and was also developed by Hartge. The PRV V6 was put into a higher state of tune- most sources say 280bhp and 294lb-ft (400nM) torque. The Laguna Biturbo was front-wheel-drive only, which surely would've been a handful - nothing back in 1995 had even remotely that much power going to the front wheels (besides Northstar Cadillacs! Heyoo!). The press car was painted a beautiful shade of light blue, and if you recognize those 18" alloys as the wheels from a Bugatti EB110, then you get bonus points. It's a shame... it would've been the French Viggen.
Performance claims for the Laguna were similar to the Safrane: 0-100km/h in 7.2 seconds, with a top speed of 254 km/h would've wiped the floor with hot hatches of the 90's: this was back when the Golf VR6 with it's 172 horsepower was considered a bit past the edge of reason. Interestingly, some digging in forums shows that at some point the car was resprayed black, the wheels went back on a Bugatti where they belonged, and it's traded hands a few times. You'd be tempted to think it's fake until you see the
Hartge VIN plate under the hood.
After that, Renault settled down and stopped building bizarre, overly powerful family cars. Just kidding, they made a
street legal go-kart and then stuffed a big
V6 in the back seat of a Clio. Not so boring after all.
