Renault 5 Buyer's Guide
Every Renault 5 in our sold records is a fast one: two GT Turbo Raiders at £25,875 and £15,750 and a Gordini Turbo at £11,475. The supermini that France built for twenty-four years now trades at auction almost entirely on its performance versions, and the money being paid for the best of them has caught many people by surprise.
Know your generations
The original Phase 1 (1972–1984) is the pretty, dainty one, sold in the UK with engines from the 45hp TL upwards; its performance flagships were the 93hp 5 Alpine (badged Gordini here) and the 110hp Alpine/Gordini Turbo. The Phase 2 (1984–1996) was a wider, squarer reskin whose 5 GT Turbo (1985–1991) became the definitive eighties turbo hatch: 120hp from a pressurised 1.4 pushrod engine in a very light shell. Above both hatchback lines sits the mid-engined 5 Turbo and Turbo 2 of 1980–1986, a rally homologation machine that shares a silhouette and nothing else; those trade far beyond anything in our current data. Late Campus and Monaco cars kept the Phase 2 alive into the nineties as honest transport.
What to pay
Three results: £25,875 for a 1990 GT Turbo Raider sold as a genuine garage find in March 2026, £15,750 for another 1990 Raider in May, and £11,475 for a 1984 Gordini Turbo in August; median £15,750. The two Raider results bracket the GT Turbo market neatly: exceptional provenance took the first well past the second. Active listings show the buy-in lower down: a 1987 GT Turbo is guided at £8,000–£10,000, a 1981 Gordini at £5,000–£6,000, another Raider at £18,000–£19,000, and a Monaco automatic at £3,000–£4,000 represents the ordinary-car end of the range.
What goes wrong
GT Turbos suffer the classic hot 1.4's ailments: carburetted turbocharging means hot-start refusal when the fuelling and ignition are out of tune, and cooked engine bays harden hoses and wiring; a properly set-up car starts and runs cleanly, and anything that doesn't needs specialist sorting rather than patience. Head gaskets and turbos fail on abused examples. Rust attacks sills, rear arches, front valances, the scuttle and (on Phase 1 cars) the double-skinned areas around the rear suspension mounts; many survivors are thin beneath the stickers. Interior plastics and Raider-specific trim are near-unobtainable, so completeness is worth paying for, and unmodified cars are now the rare ones.
Our view
An original GT Turbo bought between our £15,750 result and the £25,875 the garage-find made is the sweet spot: light, genuinely quick, adored by a strong club and specialist scene, and mechanically simple enough to keep alive for decades. The Gordini Turbo at £11,475 is the connoisseur's alternative with Phase 1 charm. Modified cars are everywhere and worth materially less; the market our results describe is paying for originality, and that gap will only widen.
