28 rarest Renaults

Rare diamonds

Renault is one of the world’s oldest automobile manufacturers, and one which has always had a strong presence in the UK.

Today, there are Renaults almost everywhere you look in the country, but most of them, naturally enough, were built fairly recently.

What follows is a selection of older (mostly, though not all, pre-2000) Renaults of which fewer than a thousand are either fully registered for road use or subject to a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN), arranged in ascending order of unlikeliness that any remain.

The data comes from the DVLA and has been collated from the How Many Left? website, which at the time of writing was accurate up to the end of June 2023.

A caveat

Before we start, it’s important to note that around 27,000 Renaults, including more than 600 manufactured in the 2020s, are listed with no model name.

The earliest (presumably some version of the company’s original Voiturette model pictured here) was built in 1900, and there are examples from almost every other year since then.

From the DVLA information, there is no way of identifying any of them, so while the figures we’ll be using follow the official data, it’s entirely possible that other cars of the same models are registered, and might even be in daily use.

1. Renault 19

The Renault 19 was the replacement for both the 9 sedan and the 11 hatchback (essentially the same car with different body styles) and the predecessor of the first-generation Megane.

At the turn of this century, there were still more than 100,000 examples on UK roads, but the number fell below four figures in early 2022 and now stands at 966.

This includes the three- and five-door hatchbacks, the convertible and the sedan, which appears in the DVLA data as ‘19 Chamade’.

The sporty RSI variant has barely survived at all – none are currently registered for road use, and five are on SORN.

• Registered: 119 • 
SORN: 847 • 
Total: 966

2. Renault 4

Renault’s first front-wheel-drive passenger car was introduced in 1961, just in time to save the company from the financial peril created by a collapse in US sales.

It was so popular that, in order to satisfy demand, Renault had to build a million, slightly less than one eighth of the eventual total, in just four and a half years.

Now, 627 are still registered in the UK in one way or another (more than half of them, oddly enough, having been built from 1984 to 1986), though this figure includes vans and pick-ups, as well as the regular passenger version.

Renault also built a lower-cost version of the car called the 3, but there is no record of any in the UK, which isn’t surprising because it didn’t sell at all well and was quickly discontinued.

• Registered: 280 • 
SORN: 347 • 
Total: 627

3. Renault 21

Large French cars have traditionally been avoided by the British car-buying public, so it makes sense that there are few Renault 21s around these parts, even though the model was in production into the mid 1990s.

483 remain, and most of them can’t legally be driven on the road.

The most exciting 21 was the high-performance Turbo, which was available either with front-wheel drive, like all the others, or with four-wheel drive, in which form it was known as the Turbo Quadra.

Turbo Quadras are rare beasts in the UK nowadays – 29 are registered, but only one is road-legal.

• Registered: 52 • 
SORN: 431 • 
Total: 483

4. Renault Vel Satis

If Renault’s conventional-looking 21 wasn’t a big hit in the UK, the far more adventurously designed Vel Satis had even less chance of success.

British customers were not persuaded by its five-star Euro NCAP rating for adult occupant protection (a rare achievement in 2002), and were probably too busy buying something else to notice that the safety organization described its pedestrian protection as ‘dismal’.

Sales were very low while the car was in production, so in a way it’s quite impressive that more than 300 are still known to be in the UK, even though most of them are on SORN.

• Registered: 82 • SORN: 222 • Total: 304

5. Renault Avantime

Launched at around the same time as the Vel Satis, but discontinued far sooner, the Avantime was a sort of cross between a minivan and a coupe.

Reactions were very mixed – some people couldn’t see the point, while others were very enthusiastic.

Members of the latter group are no doubt responsible for the fact that the Renault Avantime has survived in the UK in impressive numbers.

There are only 11 fewer survivors than there are of the Vel Satis, even though the latter was sold in the UK for two years longer, and far more are still fully registered for road use.

• Registered: 134 • SORN: 159 • Total: 293

6. Renault GTA

The GTA was the Alpine model which came after the A310 and before the A610, but was marketed in the UK as a Renault to avoid confusion with the contemporary hatchback sold in Britain as the Talbot (formerly Chrysler) Alpine.

Although it was discontinued a decade before the Avantime came along, the two cars have survived in very similar numbers, partly because the GTA was in production for considerably longer.

That said, while 46% of surviving Avantimes are fully registered, this applies to only 23% of the GTAs still in the country.

Of these, 194 are fitted with the turbocharged version of the Peugeot/Renault/Volvo V6 engine, and seven of those are examples of the Le Mans special edition (pictured).

• Registered: 66 • SORN: 226 • Total: 292

7. Renault 25

Renault’s flagship model of 1983 to 1992 replaced the 20 and 30, both of which will we’ll be mentioning later.

With their usual distaste for large French cars, British buyers were not swayed by the fact that the 25 placed second (behind the second-generation Opel Kadett/Vauxhall Astra) in the 1985 Car of the Year award, and on the whole took their business elsewhere.

With that in mind, it’s encouraging that as many as 243 are still in the country three decades after production ended, though less so that fewer than one eighth of them are fully registered.

Versions powered by the turbocharged 2.5-liter V6 engine are particularly thin on the ground, with only three fully registered and 19 on SORN.

• Registered: 30 • SORN: 213 • Total: 243

8. Renault 11

As mentioned earlier, the 9 and 11 were essentially sedan and hatchback versions respectively of the same small family car.

The British preference for hatchbacks over sedans is no doubt part of the reason why the 11 is still around in greater numbers, with 230 survivors, though as with the 25, the majority of them are on SORN.

43 of them are examples of the high-performance Turbo version, but following the usual pattern all but five are fully registered.

More promisingly, it seems that one of those was upgraded from SORN in the second quarter of 2023.

• Registered: 56 • SORN: 174 • Total: 230

9. Renault 9

The 9 was named Car of the Year for 1982 after receiving 335 votes, handsomely beating the Opel Ascona (304) and the second-generation Volkswagen Polo (252).

With 157 survivors, the Renault 9 is considerably less common than its hatchback equivalent, the 11, which seems to tie in with UK buying habits.

All is not as it seems, though, because although there are fewer 9s than 11s overall, far more of the former are fully registered.

As with the 11, there was a Turbo version, but in this case it doesn’t contribute much, since only two are fully registered and eight are on SORN.

• Registered: 75 • SORN: 82 • Total: 157

10. Renault 12

Introduced in 1969, the Renault 12 filled the gap between the 16 and the four considerably smaller Renaults (4, 6, 8 and 10) also in production at that time.

Successful in France, it was also manufactured under license in Romania by Dacia, and was the basis of the Ford Corcel sold in South America.

The UK population of Renault 12s has occasionally dipped into two figures in recent years, but currently stands at 100.

This includes three high-performance Gordinis, though the DVLA has records for 18 cars listed simply as ‘Renault Gordini’, with no information about their model names, so it’s possible that there are in fact more 12s around than are officially recognized.

• Registered: 62 • SORN: 38 • Total: 100

11. Renault 16

While it’s difficult to determine which car was the first hatchback, the Renault 16 was unquestionably an early modern example, and so unusual that at first people couldn’t find a word to describe it.

It was certainly well received, to the point where it became, in 1966, the first Renault to be named Car of the Year, beating – of all things – the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow and Oldsmobile Toronado.

By the DVLA figures, the 16 has survived in the UK at exactly the same rate as the 12, but the proportion of fully registered examples is far higher at 80%.

That’s the second-highest figure overall for all the Renaults in our list, and by far the highest in cases where the sample size is 100 or more.

• Registered: 80 • SORN: 20 • Total: 100

12. Renault 18

The Renault 18 was introduced in 1978 as a successor to the 12, though the two models were produced simultaneously for a few years.

Generally speaking, it’s a newer model, which makes it slightly surprising that 18s are thinner on the ground than 12s, and that a far greater proportion of them are on SORN.

The gasoline-engined Turbo model (pictured), by far the quickest in the range, isn’t helping the 18’s case much, since only three are fully registered and a further three are on SORN.

Those cars are very different in character from the turbo diesels, of which there appear to seven left.

• Registered: 25 • SORN: 71 • Total: 96

13. Renault 8

The 8 was the first Renault designed from scratch to be fitted with the company’s new Cléon-Fonte engine, which was in production for more than four decades after its 1962 launch, though it was also fitted retrospectively to the Caravelle sports car and the Estafette van.

One of several small rear-engined European cars of the period, the 8 was fairly conventional, but in Gordini form it was successful in both rallying and circuit racing.

Of the 89 currently known to be in the UK, 20 (including three on SORN) are Gordinis, while 14 (four on SORN) are examples of the less powerful, but still sporty, 8 S.

A further eight are fitted with what is usually referred to as an automatic gearbox, but can be described as a manual with an automated clutch.

• Registered: 65 • SORN: 24 • Total: 89

14. Renault Fuego

Based on the 18, the Renault Fuego was an aerodynamically efficient coupe and much praised when it first appeared in 1980.

Despite going into production seven years after the 8 was discontinued, the Fuego seems to be less highly favored nowadays, at least in the UK.

Only 89 are still around, according to the DVLA data, and not much more than a quarter of them are fully registered.

The 1.6-liter turbo version, considerably the most powerful in the range, accounts for 22 of the remaining Renault Fuegos, but 17 of them are on SORN.

• Registered: 21 • SORN: 57 • Total: 78

15. Renault Sport Spider

The Renault Sport Spider was powered by a 2-liter 16-valve engine familiar from the Clio and Megane hot hatches of the late 1990s, but it was mounted at the back of an aluminum chassis clothed in composite bodywork.

The car was designed for both road use and for various one-make racing series, the UK version of which was dominated (in different years) by future British and World Touring Car Champions Jason Plato and Andy Priaulx.

Fewer than 60 were registered in Britain during the Spider’s lifetime, but the figure has since risen to 74.

Although the total number has remained fairly constant in recent years, the division between full registrations and models on SORN has varied wildly from one quarter to the next.

• Registered: 33 • SORN: 41 • Total: 74

16. Renault Fluence

The sedan equivalent of the third-generation Renault Megane was not, generally speaking, imported to the UK, since Renault suspected, with good reason, that nobody would buy it.

However, the all-electric Z.E. version – considerably longer than the regular model to allow space for a battery pack – was sold in the UK briefly from 2012.

Very much a minority-interest vehicle in the days when EVs were still considered weird, the Z.E. found hardly any buyers in Britain, so it’s rather impressive that there are still 59 found in this country, and even more so that three-quarters of them are fully registered.

• Registered: 46 • SORN: 13 • Total: 59

17. Renault Caravelle

Also known as the Floride in some markets, the Caravelle was a Ghia-designed sports version of the galactically cute Dauphine sedan.

Renault originally fitted it with the Dauphine’s Billancourt engine before switching to the more modern Cléon-Fonte unit when that became available, and offered both coupe and convertible body styles.

None have been built since 1968, but with 55 examples currently in the UK, most of them fully registered, the Caravelle has survived in greater numbers than several mainstream Renaults sold far more recently.

• Registered: 41 • SORN: 14 • Total: 55

18. Renault 17

The first in our list of ‘Renaults which should have survived in greater numbers than the Caravelle but didn’t’ is the 17, one of two front-wheel-drive coupes based on the 12.

Structurally identical to the 15, which, spoiler alert, will appear later, it had slightly different styling details and was fitted with larger, more powerful engines.

Today, 46 remain in the UK, of which only one – on SORN – is a high-performance Gordini.

Disappointing though this may sound, the Gordini was simply a renamed 17 TS, and there are four of those, two of them fully registered.

• Registered: 30 • SORN: 16 • Total: 46

19. Renault A610

Although it is also referred to as an Alpine, a Renault Alpine or an Alpine Renault, the successor to the GTA appears in the DVLA records only as a Renault.

Its model name here is A610 Turbo, though the last word is superfluous since there were no naturally aspirated versions.

In production for a shorter time than the GTA, the A610 has survived in smaller numbers, even though it was on sale more recently, from 1991 to 1995.

The DVLA data shows 12 Alpines listed without model names, but none of them were built or first registered during that period, so they can’t be A610s.

• Registered: 11 • SORN: 30 • Total: 41

20. Renault Clio RSI 1.8

With a lot more than 400,000 currently in the UK, the Clio in general is by no means a rare car, but you might assume that the Williams hot hatch versions (named after the Formula One team which used to be powered by Renault engines) are thin on the ground.

And you would be right – there are 224 examples of the original model, 228 of its immediate successor and 138 of the Williams 3.

They are, however, almost ubiquitous compared with the less-powerful RSI produced towards the end of the first generation.

Only 27 are still around, all built in either 1996 or 1997, and most of them are on SORN.

• Registered: 4 • SORN: 23 • Total: 27

21. Renault 20

Like Renault’s 15 and 17 coupes, the 20 and 30 five-door hatchbacks were much the same as each other, apart from differences in engines and trim.

By a single unit, the 20 is more common in the UK today, though both are very rare.

A dozen of the surviving 20s – nearly half the total number – are in the highest TX trim level, though only two, both with the automatic transmission, are fully registered.

• Registered: 7 • SORN: 19 • Total: 26

22. Renault 30

All Renault 20s were fitted with four-cylinder engines, but most 30s had the 2.7-liter V6 co-developed by Renault, Peugeot and Volvo.

Other than the extra expense involved, this was a strong selling point, but it hasn’t made much difference to the survival rate.

There is one 30 fewer than there are 20s, though in the 30’s favor, more of them are fully registered.

As with the 20, the most popular trim level for 30 is TX, which accounts for 15 of all the known examples in the UK.

• Registered: 10 • SORN: 15 • Total: 25

23. Renault 15

Less appealing than the basically similar but usually more powerful 17, the 15 is considerably less well represented today in the UK.

24 are known to exist, split equally between those fully registered and those on SORN.

GTL versions have almost vanished, but there are nine each of the TL and TS, with a single automatic version on SORN in both cases.

• Registered: 12 • SORN: 12 • Total: 24

24. Renault 6

A larger and more upmarket (or at least less downmarket) version of the 4, the Renault 6 was introduced in 1968, was given an important engine upgrade two years later, and remained on the market for a further decade.

This was a decent run, but its production life was far shorter than the 4’s, and it never achieved the iconic status of its older relative.

This perhaps explains, at least in part, why there are 603 fewer survivors in the UK, though on the plus, side most of them are fully registered.

• Registered: 14 • SORN: 10 • Total: 24

25. Renault 5 Gordini

At the turn of the century, more than 100,000 Renault 5s were registered in Britain.

The figure has fallen dramatically since then, but there are still around 3000, which is not a bad survival rate for a car last built in 1996.

The first-generation 5 known in the UK as the Gordini, and elsewhere as the Alpine, has been described as one of the earliest hot hatches, though it didn’t reach Britain until 1979, several years after it had appeared in other markets.

Just 22 are left in the UK now, though this is at first sight a better hit rate than that of the much more radical, mid-engined 5 Turbo, which does not appear under that name in the DVLA records, but could possibly be hidden away somewhere.

• Registered: 9 • SORN: 13 • Total: 22

26. Renault Dauphine Gordini

The only Dauphines shown on the How Many Left? website are listed, presumably following DVLA practice, as Gordini Dauphine, though the usual name is Dauphine Gordini.

This model was launched in 1958, two years after the standard car appeared, and featured a more powerful version of the little Billancourt engine and four, rather than the usual three, forward gears.

Only 21 appear in the records, though the fact that 19, or just over 90%, are fully registered is an outstanding achievement, unmatched by any other car on this list.

There are almost certainly some non-Gordini Dauphines in the country, but if so they do not, for whatever reason, reveal themselves in the records.

• Registered: 19 • SORN: 2 • Total: 21

27. Renault 10

Between its axles, the Renault 10 was indistinguishable from the 8, but its front and rear overhangs were substantially longer, and the styling at each end was different.

The production run was shorter than that of the 8, though only the 10 was given a mid-life facelift, which included a change from round to rectangular headlights.

The 10 is less celebrated today than the 8 (possibly because it had no competition record to speak of, and Renault did not produce Gordini or S versions), and this is reflected in its very much lower survival rate in Britain.

Like the 8, the 10 was available with a semi-automatic transmission, but the last recorded UK car of this type fell out of the listings in 2018.

• Registered: 14 • SORN: 6 • Total: 20

28. Renault 14

Paradoxically, the rarest Renault on this list is considerably more recent than several of the others, having been produced from 1976 to 1983.

The pear-shaped 14 (literally nicknamed ‘the pear’ in France) wasn’t one of Renault’s greatest hits, and nor indeed was its engine, co-developed with Peugeot but never used in any other Renault model.

Only 13 examples are registered in any way, with the TL and TS accounting for four each, though in both cases all but one are on SORN.

• Registered: 5 • SORN: 8 • Total: 13