Renault Twingo Trophy with mid-mounted V8

It is not very often that we talk about small efficient city cars, well actually we almost never do. In this case we are making an exception. How about a mid-mounted V8 powered Renault Twingo?

French tuner Lazareth took a first-generation Renault Twingo and turned it into a real road warrior.

Front-mounted engine is gone and so are the back seats. There we have a small 3.5-liter Range Rover V8 that in stock condition packs 180 hp. Judging from the sound of the engine and wrapped headers our guess is that the output is somewhere around 240 hp.

Power is sent to rear wheels via 5-speed manual gearbox. 180-240 hp does not sound very impressive, but if you think of the weight of Twingo it should be plenty.

Engineers at Lazareth of course had to modify the chassis(tubular subframe was added) because of the extra weight on the back. both the front and rear tracks are widened where we can now find 18-inch wheels wrapped with Yokohama slicks in size 230 at the front and 320 at the back.

Other notable changes are a new suspension, brakes, MOMO bucket seats, sport steering wheel, digital gauges and matte gray exterior.

Lazareth calls it the Twingo V8 Trophy and according to their web site is available for €70,000 ($105,000).

Video below gives you a good idea how wide it is compared to the stock Twingo: