I know when Ford’s new Raptor came out, a lot of you were all, “nice, but how’s it stack up to a Renault 5?” While I certainly understand the impulse to make this comparison, up until now it’s been pretty lopsided and unfair. But that’s about to change, because the Bronco Raptor seems to have finally beaten the Renault 5 on a crucial metric everyone cares about: Width.
Specifically, I’m talking about the difference in width between a standard model and a specialized version of the same car. From what I can tell, the Renault 5 was the former undisputed king of having one car with a specialized version that grew the most in width.
And now, with the introduction of the Bronco Raptor, I think Ford has taken this crown away from Renault, finally. That’s because the Bronco Raptor is 9.8 inches wider than the base Raptor, while the Renault 5 turbo is only 8.9 inches wider than the stock Renault 5.
Please, try to remain calm!
From what I can tell, when it comes to factory-built, production cars, the previous enwidening champion has to be the Renault 5 to R5 Turbo. Renault built almost 5,000 R5 Turbos, so it’s not just some really-widened one-off, it was a real production car.
Also, I’m not counting normal pickup-to-dually-models for this. Those don’t count.
The base R5 was just over 60 inches; the R5 Turbo was 68.9 inches wide, making the Turbo 8.9 inches wider:
The new Bronco Raptor beats the R5's enwidening record by almost a full inch:
So, the Bronco spread out 0.9" to become a Raptor more than the Renault 5 spread to become a Turbo.
Impressive, Ford. Now that the Bronco has vanquished its traditional foe, the Renault 5/LeCar, what’s next? Are there worlds left to conquer?
Maybe. Has anyone tested to see if it has more body roll than a Citroën 2CV?