This small, sparky car - due in South Africa towards the end of March 2009 - sounds the perfect antidote to financial gloom and environmental angst. Modern cars are too big and heavy, which is bad for energy efficiency, traffic congestion and driving fun
It has happened because buyers expect gadgets and five-star safety equipment without which we used to manage quite well. So when a new car bucks the trend, we should rejoice.
The sophisticated approach to trend-bucking is to make cars of exotic, light materials and power them with very clever engines but this is expensive. Or you do it the way Renault has done it with the Renaultsport Twingo 133: simply keep it small.
The Slovenian-built Twingo is, in today's terms, a very small car but it's the size a regular supermini was not so long ago, not least because it's based on the underpinnings of the previous-generation Clio.
A regular Twingo is a cheap and cheerful mini which has suffered through being launched at the same time as Fiat's deeply cute 500, being unable to compete with the Italian car's charisma.
This new Renaultsport version, however, is another matter because Renault currently makes better hot hatches, from the viewpoint of driver entertainment, than anyone else.
It looks the part of the feisty raceabout, with its pumped-out wheel arches, hungry-looking front air intake, a rear valance meant to look like an aerodynamic racing car's and a big spoiler above the rear window.
It's priced at £11 550 (about R158 000) with another £650 (R9000) on top if you go for the Cup version with which you get 17" rims instead of 16", plus lower suspension and firmer again than that of the non-Cup Renaultsport Twingo, itself lower, firmer and wider in the wheel track than a regular Twingo.
And 133? That's the horsepower figure of the 1.6-litre, four-cylinder engine, a unit found in various other Renaults but tuned up here with camshafts able to open the 16 valves more widely and a freer flow for both intake and exhaust systems.
This all sounds like a reincarnation of the hot hatch as it used to be - light, frisky and agile - rather than brutally potent. Think Peugeot 205 GTI, think Renault 5 GT Turbo, and be helped in your reverie by the fact that the Twingo interior is a temple to hard, grey plastic and functional cheapness.
The liquid-crystal instrument display in the centre of the fascia is ultra-modern, though, even if the digital speedometer's location on the left is hardly ideal in a right-hand drive car.
Not to worry; there's a rev-counter in a pod dead ahead of you, an instrument you will be reading a lot because the 133's engine likes - indeed needs - to be worked hard.
ENGINE AS A TOOL
The engine sounds characterless much of the time and is far from punchy at low speed but it becomes crisper both in sound and response when taken to the upper end of the rev-counter's scale, at which point an unsophisticated boominess amplifies its vocal efforts.
Think of the engine as a tool to help you enjoy the really good part of the Twingo's dynamic repertoire, which is the way it scoots around corners while telling you, through both its precise and progressive steering and the forces acting on your body, exactly what is happening between the tyres and the road.
This transparency of communication is what used to make old-school hot hatches such fun - that and the way they and this front-wheel-drive Twingo can be steered through curves as much with the accelerator pedal as the steering wheel.
Some automakers try to neutralise this trait in case drivers fear getting into a skid but, as designed into the Twingo, it's actually a safety feature because if the bend unexpectedly tightens you decelerate, feel the nose tuck in and the tail edge out, and then accelerate again, all without electronic help. There is an ESP system but you can turn it off for extra fun without fear.
One snag: The price of the precision and tautness is a ride which can get tiresomely choppy on bumpy roads. If that troubles you, don't tick the Cup option box. That way you'll get even closer to the 1980's hot-hatch experience, because cars were more supple back then. Either way, the Renaultsport Twingo 133 is the ideal fun car for modern times. - The Independent, London