Ferrari, Porsche, and Mercedes-AMG are among the brands that raced in the 2024 edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours, and first place went to an Audi R8 LMS Evo II entered by a private German team. This day-long endurance race isn’t nearly as publicized as the 24 Hours of Le Mans but it takes the same toll on cars, the people who drive them, and the people who work on them in the pits. It’s not quite the final boss of endurance racing but it’s close — and a German team named Rauh Racing is preparing to line up on the starting grid of the 2026 race in—drumroll please—a Renault Twingo.
There’s not a strand of performance in the first-gen Twingo’s DNA, it’s a cheap and cheerful city car, so why the hell would you race one? Good question. I spoke with Filip Rauh, who is orchestrating the project with his brother Felix, to learn more about the car and their plans for the race.
First, a short refresher course. The original Renault Twingo was never officially sold in the United States, but you’ve undoubtedly seen at least one if you’ve traveled to France at some point in the past 30 years. Unveiled in late 1992, the 135-inch-long hatchback featured a friendly face, a surprisingly spacious interior, and an affordable price tag. It was fun all around. Renault built over 2.6 million units of the first-gen Twingo by the time production finally ended in 2007. Many are still around today, and the model is making the transition from a rusty, bargain-priced used car that you’re almost ashamed to be seen in into a collector’s car. I saw someone try to sell a low-mileage one for $10,000 last month at Paris’ Retromobile show.
I don’t know whether it sold, or what it ended up going for, but the idea that the prestigious show’s organizers would even allow a Twingo into the convention center is telling. In its home country, the Twingo is increasingly considered the millennial generation’s people’s car. Everyone born before, say, the late 1990s has a Twingo-related memory. Your dad may have driven you to school in one, it might be the car you learned to drive in, or you may have dated a girl who had a beat-up one in college. One of my memories is climbing a small wall to look over a relative’s fence and check out a new, Coral Red Twingo parked in a neighbor’s driveway (in hindsight, it was very likely one of the first ones built).
Fittingly, the Rauh brothers came up with the idea of racing a Twingo while road-tripping across France.
“We’re car nuts, but we also ride motorcycles a lot,” Rauh told me. “Last summer, we were on a motorcycle trip to France, headed to the Atlantic coast, and we spotted a Twingo on the road near Bordeaux. That evening, while relaxing at a campground, we started talking about what it would take to race one. We thought it would be super fun. It’s such an iconic car, and it looks super-cute; It looks like the anti-race car,” he added.
Was the idea far-fetched? No doubt about it. Was it doable? Surprisingly: Yes. Rauh downloaded the Nürburgring 24 Hours regulations and read through the entire document in his tent. The original Twingo is eligible to compete in the event because it was manufactured after 1996 (that it came out in 1992 is irrelevant here), and modifications such as an engine swap are allowed as long as the engine comes from the same brand as the car it’s being swapped into. You can’t LS-swap a Twingo and go racing, but anything from Renault’s vast portfolio of hot hatches is fair game.
The project really started when the Rauh brothers forked over €1,000 euros (around $1,000) for a 1995 Twingo with about 67,000 kilometers (roughly 42,000 miles). They found it in Karlsruhe, a German city that’s near the French border, and they lucked out. Not many of these were preserved, they rust easy, and finding a clean, low-mileage example has become difficult. Theirs looks like it’s in great shape. It was built with a 1.2-liter four-cylinder engine that sends 54 horsepower and 66 pound-feet of torque to the front wheels via a five-speed manual transmission.
The 1.2 quickly vacated the engine bay to make room for a 2.0-liter four-cylinder sourced from a Renaultsport Clio 172. Rauh explained that he’s not a mechanic, so he’s outsourcing the swap to a German shop named Rothe Motorsport which usually works on exotics. The people working there seemed unfazed by such a wild idea. “They asked ‘does it fit?’ I said ‘yeah,’ and they replied ‘OK, we’ll do it,'” Rauh said. Shoehorning a 2.0 in an early Twingo required fabricating new engine mounts, shortening the driveshafts, and coming up with a new way to install the alternator.
As the name implies, the Clio 172’s four-cylinder is rated at 172 horsepower stock. Rauh hopes to increase that figure to approximately 200. It’s not difficult to get more power out of these engines, but it needs to be reliable enough to run for 24 straight hours without jettisoning a rod.
Rothe Motorsport also installed the Clio 172’s five-speed manual transmission and braking system, while Rauh purchased a custom-designed, fully adjustable suspension system from Taiwan-based D2 Racing. The brothers will source numerous other parts before they can race their Twingo, including a full, FIA-approved roll cage, a fuel cell, and an onboard fire suppression system. This is serious, pro-level racing.
As of writing, the engine is in the car, it starts, and the cooling and electrical systems have been sorted out. The Twingo is currently sitting at a different shop getting a roll cage installed, which is expected to take two to three weeks. When that’s done, it’ll go back to Rothe Motorsport for the finishing touches. Mechanics notably need to install the suspension to see how low the car sits and, in turn, finalize the engine placement.
The brothers initially wanted to keep the exterior looking as stock as possible, but they’ve decided to add a body kit after talking with experts in aerodynamics. What the kit will look like is anyone’s guess. “We have the opportunity to do something cool that will improve performance, but I can’t say too much about it now. It’s at a super-early stage,” Rauh told me. As for the color, well… it depends on who ends up sponsoring the car. The team is still looking for sponsors. So far, just about every euro spent on the project (including the engine swap) has been out of pocket.
Building a race car is expensive, but Rauh Racing will keep racing costs in check by relying on a crowd-sourced pit crew.
“The response we’ve received so far has been insane. We have a long list of people who said, ‘Hey, we want to help out.’ And it’s not just random people who wouldn’t know what they’re doing. They’re people who are telling us that they’re certified Renault technicians, and they’d be happy to work for free and be part of the project. People are volunteering; I’m super grateful for that. So, I’m confident that we’ll find a team,” Rauh said.
If everything goes according to plan, the mechanical part of the project will be finished by the end of April. The next step will be installing parts such as the seats and the harness. The dates for the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours haven’t been set yet, but the race will take place at some point in June. If you’re looking at a calendar, that’s kind of far away. If you’re planning on racing a 30-year-old French city car for a full day, June 2026 may as well be the day after tomorrow. There’s a lot left to do, but the brothers are confident they’ll triumphantly drive onto the starting line.
Rauh concluded with wise words for anyone who dreams of hitting the track, or who has a half-finished project car sitting on jack stands: “Just start. I think that was the biggest thing. Start small, but start. And, don’t think about everything that can go wrong and that you will need to do, because then you’ll never do it. If you start thinking about every minor detail in the beginning, you’ll never start. You’ll say ‘It’s impossible.'”
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