The reborn Renault 4 is a retro-styled electric crossover primed to become the French brand’s best-selling EV when it launches in 2025.
Twinned with the lower-slung and similarly nostalgic 2024 Renault 5 supermini, it will be the second car to use Renault’s compact CMF-BEV architecture and will be built alongside the 5 at Renault’s new ElectriCity production hub in northern France.
The 4 has appeared for the first time in concept form at the Paris motor show, wearing an outlandish off-road-themed bodykit in reference to the modified Renault 4s that take part in the yearly 4L Trophy rally across the Moroccan desert.
The original 4 – variously referred to as the world’s first mass-production hatchback, MPV and crossover – was a hugely important car for Renault and sold more than eight million units across a three-decade production run. In reviving its name and some of its defining design cues, Renault is hinting at similar volume aspirations for the electric second coming.
“It was a car you could drive in the countryside, you could drive off road, you could drive in the city,” designer Sandeep Bhambra told Autocar. “So that versatility was part of the brief: we wanted to make the 4 the most versatile car in the segment, whereas the 5 is more of an urban city car.”
So while the production-spec 4 will lose the ‘4Ever Trophy’ concept’s more rugged cues and sit slightly closer to the ground (Bhambra said: “Whatever you see in the body colour is very, very close to production”), the focus on practicality and utility will remain.
Measuring 4060mm long and with a wheelbase of 2570mm, the concept is slightly smaller than the Captur but a tad larger than the Clio. With the lack of a combustion motor up front, and with no transmission tunnel running through the cabin, it should offer an overall boost in space and functionality. Renault has yet to show the interior of the 4 or 5, but a reveal is expected next year.