[French moderns] Twingo power!

Remember the article on the Ford Sierra? Here's another important european car designed by Patrick Le Quément : the Renault Twingo. The first generation of this car was produced during an enormous 15 years, without any important changes. Almost 2,500,000 units were produced in total. The name Twingo is a mix of three words : Twist, Swing and Tango.

First generation

Introduced in 1992, the first Twingo has been built until 2007, and is still produced for South American market. What was so revolutionary about the car? Its styling was cute, but nothing astonishing there. The main advantage of the car was its interior space. With an ingenious system of rear seats (that was able to slide to increase rear boot space), it was offering the same amount of space than a compact car. The first engine and transmission were somewhat rough (those were the parts of the old Renault 5), but it has been improved over the years, to become a fully respectable car. The engine was especially replaced with the Clio's older one.

Being a french diecast maker, Majorette was clearly designed to build replicas of french cars. Majorette made a lot of versions of its no.206 Twingo replica, with a variety of colors, even in a racing scheme! The car in itself doesn't have too much details, so it was surely easy to reproduced it. Anyway, Majorette made a perfect job on the diecast, that is really accurate with the real one. It is a somewhat rare casting, mainly because of Majorette's financial problems in the 90s. There's a specific version with a panoramic rooftop produced in a strange shade of blue-green, and this is the one i have. It was one of my favorites cars when i was a child, but unfortunately my original one is destroyed (Majorette's money problems made fabrication quality worser than older castings), so i bought a new one of the exact same variation.

Second generation : a hard challenge

With more than 15 years of career, it was quite a challenge for Renault to replace the Twingo, that became a legend. First showed as a concept car at the Paris Auto Show in 2006, the new Twingo, also called Twingo II, was clearly in another direction than the first one. With more than 13% of weight augmentation, it was way bigger and larger, obligation of market's new tendencies. Clearly less original than the first one, it includes some great ideas such as the sliding back seat. The new Twingo's engines delivers way more though, and it has been declined in a few sporty versions, such as the RS and Twingo RS Gordini, and the Wind roadster. It  received the "best city car" award in 2011, and should be facelifted in 2012. Even though its style is more convential, it remains a pretty nice car in my humble opinion.

Majorette (who else ?) made a new edition of the #206, called 206B, reproducing the new Twingo II. As Majorette's owner changed, the casting is way differently made than the first one. It is very nicely made overall. The blue color suits it well... but not the big glass lights in my opinion. They look quite rough and unrealistic. Also, why is there no interior door panels? Reminds me of the recent Welly castings...The tampos add a nice touch to the overall car. It is really interesting to see the picture of both, because you can really see Majorette's evolution. Still a nice casting, and mandatory in any collection (quite hard to get in Canada, thanks to my french friends i have one :))
Enjoy the pics and the article! :)