A morning spent at Mondello race track provided the opportunity to try two wildly different offerings from Renault, writes Brian Byrne.
The official reason was the launch of the Twizy EZ electric quadricycle, a funky little one-and-a-half seater, three of which can fit nose-in in a standard parallel car parking space.
It's one of those things that one simply doesn't know where it might fit in the Irish motorscape, and incoming Renault Ireland country manager Paddy Magee was straight up in saying he hadn't a clue how many, if any, they might sell here.
At a fiver under €10,000 for the vehicle, plus €50 a month lease of the battery, the 100km range runabout is also open to the side-wind elements unless you fork out another €500 for doors, and a further €300 for zip-in windows. Even then there are enough gaps to let both wind and rain, and lots of traffic noise through.
Nipping around a tight coned track at Mondello certainly gave a feel for the tidiness of the idea, and the rear-mounted electric motor offers plucky acceleration up to the limit of 80km/h.
The full maths of the proposition are still a bit iffy, unless you really want a four-wheeled electric motorcycle with a roof, seatbelts and driver's airbag. But there may be space in the growing Go-Car/Zipcar city car rental game.
Meantime, I also got a chance to hustle a Clios RS200 around the real Mondello track. Lots of punch, and a decent grip on the tight bends at full throttle, it was one of those things that just when you were getting used to it, they took it away.
(Something like my parents did when I was very small, and failed to grasp the concept of pedals on a tricycle they gave me. Just as I was beginning to get the hang of it, the thing was disappeared until I was older.)
Anyhow, we wish Paddy Magee well in his new role, and his comments on the restructuring of Renault here to a sustainable format were interesting and appeared refreshingly sound. More on that later.
