FIVE ALIVE

An electrically powered Renault 5 to celebrate the glorious little car's 50th birthday? Hold on tight

- JASON BARLOW

Body roll. Like Spangles or Bowie's sequinned Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit, it's a very Seventies phenomenon. Back then, it was part of the road tester's lexicon, something a regular car did when you pitched it into a corner with enthusiasm.

The Renault 5 likes to roll. Right now I'm driving one through a tiny place called Wy-dit-Joli-Village, in Vexin national park, 30 miles northwest of Paris. Picturesque in the extreme, with its glades, forests, and meadows, a veritable French idyll. Now here comes a minty green Renault 5, as ubiquitous a sight in rural France as you could imagine back in the day, and currently celebrating its 50th birthday. Between 1972 and 1996, and across two major iterations, more than 5.5m were sold, crucially to people from all walks of life. The R5 was classless and pan-generational, wide awake long before 'woke'.

Here comes a corner. Like the Citroen 2CV, the original Renault 5 demands a certain commitment from the keener driver. Not skill so much, but definitely commitment. We turn in and the Cinq just sighs over on its pillowy suspension, settling into what feels like an irretrievably comical angle. I hold on and then we're through and away.