1970 Works Renault R8 Gordini - Reader Resto

By: David Cavanagh with Guy Allen - Words & Photos

Date: 10.10.2022

This front-line works rally car languished in a shed for decades and is now back in fighting trim

We got the car about five years ago. It went off the road in about 1978, as the owner at the time wanted to restore it to his vision, which was an R8 Gordini in French racing blue with white stripes. However this is a works car and is meant to be in its current colour. People were outraged by the potential change and the project was put on hold for around 35 years. The owner rang me up and said he was never going to do this, did I want it?

My brother Steve (the owner of an Alpine) and I grew up with Renaults – our father bought a new 4CV in 1954. We’ve been addicted ever since.

Steve used to rally back in the seventies when these things were dominating and were the car to have at club-level rallying.

I currently run a business called French Connection, where we deal in parts for Renaults, so it’s something that gets under your skin – an incurable disease!

As is often the case, when you take on a part-done project it means you have to do it all over again. If the engine bay and inside the cabin hadn’t already been painted blue, we might have gotten away with a more modest job. In the end, we effectively had to go back to the beginning. So sand-blast it and start again.

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Most of the components were already there. The motor had been rebuilt in 1980 and had never been started. It was a brand new Gordini engine. Where a normal R8 Gordini was 1255cc, the works cars all ran the Alpine kit, which is 1296cc. They included a crossflow head and twin side-draught Webers – it’s supposed to be putting out about 130hp, which is quite good for an engine that size. In rally trim, they weighed around 1100kg.

The transmission is a really close ratio five-speed and is very low-geared overall. On the highway in fifth, it’s screaming its head off.

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Brakes are discs all round. It has coil springs and Koni dampers all round with an unusual rear end that features four shockers. When you look underneath it, the whole car was reinforced by Renault Australia. It has gusseting here and there, including the suspension. The whole underside is like one big skid-pan. It’s designed to go through water splashes flat out.

There are lots of other Gordini modifications, such as the extra fuel tank in the front.

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French blue hue was ditched in favour of Daffodil Yellow

When it comes to restoring one, finding a rust-free body is the biggest challenge. For us, however, it was sourcing the rally gear. The previous owner had decided to convert it to a road car and sold off a lot of the specialist equipment, which we needed to track down again.

For example we found the original roll bar that came out of it in 1978, it was in Adelaide! It was a situation where you’d be asking people "who did you sell it to?" until you finally tracked it down.

As for the navigation gear, it’s all the equipment that came out of it when it was decommissioned – none of it is replica. You’d never run it in a modern rally, as it’s all 50-year-old technology.

Not a lot to it really

If you look closely, you’ll see other little details, such as the headlight washers and the odd button on the gearshift. The latter activated the windscreen wipers, removing the need for the driver to let go of the gearshift.

The wheels are the original Collier items that came out of Perth. Bruce Collier, himself a competitor at one stage, was the guru who was behind the preparation of a lot of the works cars.

What’s it like to drive? Shithouse on the road! It’s noisy, screams its head off and was never designed to cruise on the road. On a rally track, it’s usually sideways and much better.

Faithfully restored to its rally glory days, with Cibie lights and rubber mud flaps as in the 1970s

Overall. It’s in exactly the trim used when it won the Victorian Rally Championship back in 1971.

Former Australian Rally Champion Bob Watson took this car out on its first drive when it was finished, at the local retro rally day. I said to him, "Remember, Bob, it’s a brand new engine so don’t take it over 5000." The look on his face was priceless. He complained they didn’t really start working until seven or eight. Oh, and he put in the grass on the second corner! There was no harm done.

Only three Daffodil Yellow works cars were built, and this is the only survivor. They built 60 R8 Gordinis in Australia, and this is the very last one. It came third outright in the national rally championship in 1970, the year Bob won in its sister car. So it has a great history.

THE RESTO:

Hot donk

The Gordini engine had a big power boost over the standard unit.

Man made

Custom made auxillary panel.

Tilted

Max revs would show the needle straight up and easily spotted.

Daffodil Yellow

Freshly painted in correct team colours.

Halda

Back in the day navigators swore by these..

Double shocks

A unique rally Gordini feature was the double rear shocks..

Original car: 1970 Works Renault R8 Gordini
Length of restoration: 4 years

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From Unique Cars #469, Aug/Sep 2022

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