Cars - Renault Twingo

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	Cars - Renault Twingo

The Renault Twingo is a city car built by the French manufacturer Renault, launched in 1993 to replace the venerable Renault 4. The car is 3.43m long, 1.63m wide and 1.42m high; it can be described as a MPV/hatchback crossover, as its roof is quite low but the bonnet and windshield are almost a single surface. It quickly became popular in Europe due to its unusual looks and its ease of use. It has undergone two major restylings, and is still in production.

It was designed under Patrick Le Quément, Renault's chief designer. Le Quément's belief was that it was a greater risk for Renault to take no risks at all, having seen its market share suffer from blandly styled cars such as the Renault 9 and 11. It has been rumored that the design of the Twingo was partially inspired by the ships from the Konami videogame Twinbee; however, Renault has made no statement regarding this. Another, better documented design link is that to the Polish prototype Beskid.

Despite the car's sales success, it still lags behind the Ford Ka in the A segment, partly due to Renault's short-sighted decision not to produce a right-hand drive version, meaning that official imports to the United Kingdom (Renault's biggest export market) and Ireland never happened.

The Renault Modus was originally planned to supersede the Twingo, but now a new generation will be produced in 2006. Unlike the original, it will also be offered in right-hand drive.

Beskid Link

The Beskid was a Polish vehicle designed in early 1980s at the Ośrodek Badawczo-Rozwojowy Samochodów Małolitrażowych - BOSMAL. The monospace body was at that time a novel idea. In 1981 the design team led by Wiesław Wiatrak started work on the Beskid 106. In 1982 their construction plans were complete and they started working on the first prototype that was presented in the spring of 1983. The body chracterized itself with a very good air resistance quotient Cx=0.29 - this led the Beskid to use only 3.9 liters of petrol per 100 km at a speed of 90 km/h.

So called political and economic reasons prevented serial production. Seven prototypes were created in the meantime. The communist government officials ordered all of them to be destroyed. The engineers disobeyed them, which is why the Beskid can be viewed at the Museum of Technology at the Warsaw Pałac Kultury i Nauki. The novel monospace body was patented. Unfortunately the funds to renew the patents ran out. Renault used this fact to develop their Twingo. They waited, however with the market introduction until the patents ran out definitively.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Renault Twingo ]

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