Renault Alliance MT 1.4L Turbo ? Quesako ?

Below, you'll find an article published in MotorTrend magazine in January 1984.

So we are between the award received by Renault "Car of the year" and the launch of the Renault Encore.
MotorTrend journalists initiated a Renault Alliance MT Turbo project with Renault Racing and Katech.
They followed the technical choices, the developments and were finally able to drive this Turbo version.

As you can imagine, the goal is not to market this little rifle bullet, even if a 2L will appear later in 1987 on the GTA, but rather to try small, inexpensive modifications on a 2-door model, with a 1.4L engine, which allow the Alliance to get closer to the racing versions (Renault Cup) while maintaining the pleasure and enjoyment of driving on the road.

Hope you will enjoy it :).

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We certainly don’t mean to take anything away from a Car of the Year winner, but one of the most immediate impressions anyone forms of the Renault Alliance is that the term acceleration may be lending a bit too much dignity in describing this car’s progress from zero to 60.

During the course of the Car of the Year testing, the Alliance distinguished itself as an uncommonly good handler and a very good stopper. It was a real tiger in the downhill twisties, but 14.57 sec from stop to 60 and 20-sec quarter miles is getting into diesel country.

Wouldn’t it be fun, we said, if this thing had a little more horsepower? Imagine what a little Q-ship it’d make!

Which brings us to the car you see here—the Renault Alliance Turbo. Fast, fast relief for the low-horsepower blahs.

This Alliance grew out of that conversation regarding converting the MT 1983 Car of the Year into a more interesting piece of iron. Project car, in other words; the responsible parties being Renault Racing and this publication.

The conversation took a predictable direction. One particular quick-and-easy course suggested itself: Bolt on a Gordini head, a couple of sidedraft Webers, et cetera on the rest—build a race car for the street. Well that’s certainly been done before, pick your starting point. And certainly those parts are available, but they apply to street and production plans about as much as an investment in mechanical adding machines will assure your lifetime security. In other words, here was yet another variation on a tired old concept, about as technologically interesting as cold soup and offering as much real-world relevance as building a broom to sweep sand off the beach. The real world is coming to microchips and forced induction, and efficiency and useability must be part of any current equation.

As a result, turbocharging won the conversation, and this car’s concept took shape from there. It needed to get around in a hurry, make good time in a pleasant way, be unobtrusive enough not to bother the citizenry—particularly citizenry wearing badges. It had to be competent and useable, through the addition of some strong points, without detracting from the worthwhile function the little Alliance already possessed.

An important point here: Useable, in a hurrying car, means you can use the speed. Example: The other day we saw a De-Tomaso Pantera, wide fender flares covering enormous tires on sunshine polished wheels, big front spoiler, huge wing cantilevered over the rear deck, painted bright red like the distillation of all the world’s fire departments, and rumbling away to the tune of a near-full race Ford V-8. The adolescents loved it. This self-abuse fantasy, this joke of automotive circusdom, has a useable top speed of about 54 mph before every black-and-white in seven western counties will be lit up and on the roll.

Remember that useable factor, and consider our Alliance Turbo.

Body modifications were minor, held to charcoal paint, small spoilers, better tires and wheels. Enough to make it work better and look nice and neat, but without excessive increase to its visibility.

Engine changes were major, the turbo blasting cubic yards of life-giving air through the intake, enough that the development program used up three clutches before the odometer got to 1000 miles. Enough to knock seconds off and add miles-per-hour to the quarter-mile performance. Enough to make it classifiable as quick. Not to mention lots more fun to drive.

Now aside from the turbo, the basic Alliance didn’t really require much alteration to reach this ambitious level. After all, the basic Alliance is a dandy little hack. Pleasant to look at. Good ride and handling feel—although with compromises aimed at comfortable ride rather than decreasing radius. And a solid, workable drivetrain. In short, since the basic car is so inherently good, from Kenosha assembly line to MT project is a surprisingly minor transmogrification.

You could look it up.

We’ll start with the easiest parts. On the outside, the 2-door sedan was shot with charcoal gray metallic paint specified for the MT Car of the Year Special Edition models, which you can buy at your friendly AMC/Renault dealer. Under the nose went a chin spoiler, a one-off by Renault Racing. Above that, the decklid spoiler is from the European version of the Alliance, Renault 9, in this case the GTS model. Bolts right on.

The inside followed the keep-it-simple theme. The seats are from the Renault 11, and are like those in the Alliance except the backrests have side bolsters for lateral g’s in the smile zone. The steering wheel is a 3-spoke Momo, the Pininfarina model. Items of decadence, like a nice AMC offered sound system, power windows and such, complete the interior deal.

With the exception of the front spoiler, all pieces are bolt-ons, available from at least someplace in the world. They are pieces, in fact, we would like to urge Renault to make available here.

On the other hand, the chassis parts are available here, pretty much. Since Renault has at least 50 cars’ worth of experience with the Alliance on racetracks accumulated in last summer’s West Coast Alliance Cup series, the suspension pieces were already on the shelf and proven. Koni adjustable shocks, stiffer front and rear antiroll bars, and harder bushings are all part of the Alliance race car kit. At first, this car also had the shorter, stiffer racing springs, but soft bottoms and hard hearts in Renault management decided that was going too far. Now the springs are a compromise between the race cars and the production versions. The 13 × 6-Momo Gemini wheels are also part of the race kit, and the Goodyear Eagle GT tires, 175/70R13, will likely be the race tires for 1984. So except for a slightly softer ride and not sitting quite as close to the pavement, the project car is fully up to the racetrack capabilities of the racing Alliances. And as several members of this staff can vouch, the track capabilities of the racing Alliances are right up there in the serious range of cornering speeds.

The brakes are stock. Again, racing experience has proved that the normal Alliance brakes, including pad and shoe materials—which were used as-is on the race cars—are more than sufficient.

This leaves only the engine. Even though Renault’s IMSA Champion Spark Plug Challenge racing Alliances rely on Weber feeding, turbocharging seemed to make the most sense for our car. Renault engineers have for years been implementing forced induction on everything from F1 cars on down, and the Turbo Fuego, with its fuel injection and intercooler, is a model of an advanced, sophisticated, and refined turbo installation. Officially turbocharging may not (or may) be in the Alliance’s future, but unofficially it doesn’t take much contemplation to figure that the thought just has to have crossed the minds of Renault’s product planners. Frequently. Rumor Control is also abuzz with increasingly substantiated tales of a brand-new engine for the Alliance, a SOHC design suitable for displacements ranging from 1.6 to 2.1 liters, with 1.7 seeming to crop up as the number chosen for American buyers. At any rate, more Alliance horsepower is on the way, although the exact form and number is still under development. But a turbo is certainly not out of sync with other Renault activities, and we guarantee this car gathers more than just passing interest from Renault high-ups.

There was surprisingly little done to the engine’s innards to live with boost. Some strengthening internally, like different pistons and rods, and that was about that. By the way, Renault can sell you a lot of these parts, and they should be figured into the equation by anyone contemplating doing an aftermarket turbo installation on an Alliance of his own.