Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, authentic movies and articles for traditional automotive fans, has launched its newest video, that includes automotive devotee Juan Carlos Fernandez who labored exhausting to revive the Group B rally legend of his desires.
After a few years away, the Petrolicious web site and YouTube Channel has been lately rebooted by duPont REGISTRY Group, and new movies at the moment are dropping each Friday. Petrolicious celebrates the innovations, the personalities, and the aesthetics that ignite a collective lust for nice automotive machines, and it seeks to tell, entertain, and encourage its group of aficionados and pique the curiosity of those that have been lacking out.
Right this moment, Petrolicious takes up Juan’s story…
It’s akin to touchdown a dream job you lied by means of your tooth to get. You stroll in on day one, staring down a pile of duties you aren’t remotely certified for. The job? Managing a automotive with a 1.5-liter turbo engine operating round 2 bar of increase mounted the place the groceries used to go. No airbag, no abs, no coaching wheels. Simply determine it out earlier than you get fired or, on this case, despatched backward by means of a guardrail. Your new boss, (who ignores OSHA and HR) the Renault R5 Maxi Turbo, expects outcomes.
Juan Carlos Fernandez is aware of what it’s like to start out from nothing. In 1963, his household fled Cuba with an toddler Juan in tow, forsaking their house, their belongings, all the things they’d ever identified. They landed in Puerto Rico with no roadmap, simply the necessity to survive. His mother and father labored tirelessly to rebuild, instilling in him the form of work ethic that doesn’t ask for shortcuts.
By the point he was a teen, vehicles had his full consideration. His cousins have been within the auto enterprise, and he scraped collectively no matter he may to purchase his first automotive, a $200 undertaking. One automotive was two. Two was three. The hustle by no means stopped. If he wanted extra money, he labored more durable. A long time later, that drive was Ferco Motors, the dealership he owns right this moment.
A good friend as soon as instructed him the R5 was “so ugly it’s lovely,” however to Juan, it was simply lovely. It had character, presence, and the form of uncooked, unfiltered driving expertise that fashionable vehicles have misplaced. It wasn’t constructed for straight-line pace or easy efficiency, it was constructed to be pushed exhausting, to demand one thing from the motive force. And that’s precisely what drew him to it.
The R5 is a product of Renault’s obsession with Group B, the golden period of rally racing the place producers constructed probably the most excessive machines they might get away with. The FIA required producers to construct a restricted variety of road-going variations to compete, and Renault’s reply was to take their humble financial system hatch and reimagine it into one thing wild. Vulnerable to boiling issues down, and for the sake of brevity we’ll simply say the engine was moved to the again, the physique was widened, and the ability was turned up. The outcome was the R5 Turbo.
That automotive made its competitors debut in 1980 on the Tour de Corse, a rally identified for its tight, twisting tarmac phases. French driver Jean Ragnotti piloted the automotive and, regardless of being up in opposition to rather more developed machines, confirmed its potential. The actual breakthrough got here the next yr when Ragnotti drove the R5 Turbo to an outright victory on the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally. It was undoubtedly good, however… was extra attainable?
Enter the R5 Maxi Turbo, the last word model, the ultimate boss. It was constructed to compete with the Audi Quattro and the Peugeot 205 T16. Undoubtedly a tricky crowd. Renault introduced in Bozian Racing, a French motorsport engineering agency identified for squeezing each final drop of efficiency out of small-displacement engines. On this case, they pulled 350 horsepower out of Renault’s 1.5L engine. They made the automotive stiffer and elevated the work aerodynamics have been doing. It had some success in competitors and proved its mettle on tarmac, however as all-wheel-drive rivals took over, its time on the grime and within the highlight pale.
Juan’s R5 wasn’t excellent when he purchased it. It had been sitting, uncared for, and the primary drive was a disappointment. No increase, a failing clutch, only a reminder that even the greats want work, and time spares nobody, and no factor. However with the best experience, the best folks, and loads of effort, it got here again to life, a worthy tribute to the Group B legend.
Juan Carlos Fernandez didn’t get right here by taking the simple approach. He got here from nothing, labored for all the things, and by no means requested for a shortcut. The R5 doesn’t give one both. It simply needs you to indicate up for work.
