Renault has revealed the 8 Gordini Concept, a two-seat electric coupé that reworks the 1964 sports saloon for the battery age with a 270 hp electric motor. The one-off is 4.12 metres long, sits on mismatched 19- and 20-inch wheels and was designed entirely in-house after a competition that produced more than 300 sketches. It is the latest in a run of Renault heritage reboots and goes on display at the Paris Motor Show in October.
Renault has pulled the covers off the 8 Gordini Concept, a two-seater electric coupé that reinterprets one of the most fondly remembered cars in French motorsport. The show car was unveiled on 24 September at the Renault Carwalk and will be shown on the brand’s stand at the Paris Motor Show from 12 to 18 October 2026.
It follows the R17 electric restomod created with Ora Ïto and the Renault 5 Diamant art car made with Pierre Gonalons. All of these one-offs are destined for the Renault Collections museum in Flins, which the company says will open to the public in around fifteen months.
From 95 hp petrol to 270 hp electric
The original Renault 8 Gordini arrived in 1964 with a rear-mounted 95 hp engine driving the rear wheels — quick for its day, but demanding to drive quickly. It became a training ground for a generation of drivers, Jean Ragnotti among them, and its double white stripe turned into one of motoring’s best-known liveries. Renault notes that by attaching the Gordini name to a sporty version of a mainstream model, it made performance affordable roughly a decade before the GTI era began.
The concept replaces that engine with a 270 hp electric motor. Renault says the wide, heavily sculpted rear end is a deliberate nod to the rear-engined, rear-drive layout of the original, and the roofline now carries a slight rake the 1964 car never had. No battery capacity, range, acceleration or top-speed figures have been released.
Racing proportions and a café racer approach
At 4.12 m (162 in) long, 1.88 m (74 in) wide and 1.27 m (50 in) tall, the concept is squat and broad, with 19-inch wheels at the front and 20-inch wheels at the rear. Where the original was a four-door saloon, this is a two-door coupé with a V-shaped prow and six round headlamps set into the bodywork — a reference to the auxiliary lights of the rally version.
The styling follows what Renault calls a “café racer” philosophy, borrowed from custom motorcycling and already used on the Renault 5 Turbo 3E: strip away the non-essential and let the materials and mechanical parts do the talking. The old chrome side moulding is now a crease pressed into the body, many shut lines have been deleted, and the bonnet lifts off in one piece with no visible join at the front.
“With Renault 8 Gordini Concept, we wanted to spark emotion by drawing on both our heritage and modern times, bringing together the icons of yesterday and the future. This exercise in style sets out to reinvent Renault 8 Gordini for the modern day. The aim of this coupé is to inspire emotion and capture the imagination of all car enthusiasts. And when I talk about emotion, I’m not talking about nostalgia, but real passion for cars.” — Alexandre Malval, VP Design, Renault
The double white stripe is now structural rather than decorative: the grille at the base of the windscreen and the lighting graphics inside the rear lamps line up with it, and it carries on across the top of the dashboard, changing from white to blue on the way. The paint itself is a three-layer finish inspired by the original’s Bleu de France, combining mother-of-pearl with a blue-tinted binder.
An interior stripped to the essentials
Inside, the dashboard is a horizontal strip of brushed aluminium holding round digital dials with thick bezels that echo the headlights. Plastics give way to aluminium and Alcantara, the bucket seats are trimmed in blue corduroy in the centre, and the only real visual flourish is a red dot on the stopwatch button in the middle of the dash. The carbon used for the bodywork is deliberately absent from the cabin.
Designed entirely in-house
Unlike the R17 show car, this one was drawn without an outside collaborator. Renault Design ran an internal competition that drew more than 300 sketches, from retro pastiche to full futurism; two were developed as 2:5 scale models before the best of each was merged into the final design.
What it means
This is an exploratory design exercise rather than a product announcement, and Renault has not said anything about production. But it lands in a period when the brand has been mining its back catalogue commercially as well as sentimentally — the Renault 5 E-Tech and the forthcoming 5 Turbo 3E show there is a market for reinterpreted classics, and the 8 Gordini badge is one of the few French names with the same pull as an Alpine.
Facts: Renault 8 Gordini Concept
- Power: 270 hp electric motor
- Body: two-seat coupé, carbon bodywork
- Length: 4.12 m (162 in)
- Width: 1.88 m (74 in)
- Height: 1.27 m (50 in)
- Wheels: 19-inch front, 20-inch rear
- Status: one-off concept, no production announced
The concept goes on public display at the Paris Motor Show from 12 to 18 October 2026.
Source: media.renault.com