This ’98 Renault Spider Is About as Raw as Sports Cars Come, and It’s For Sale
Renault's ultra-lightweight roadster was practically a street-legal race car, and one of the roughly 1,700 examples built is for sale on Cars & Bids. The post This ’98 Renault Spider Is About as Raw as Sports Cars Come, and It’s For Sale appeared first on The Drive.
When you think of Renault, odds are you picture a small, dinky hatchback with a sub-100-horsepower engine. The first-generation Twingo, perhaps, or the Renault 4 that was sold for over 30 years. Performance is a big part of the French company’s DNA, however, and the Renault Sport Spider illustrates that point well. It sounds like a Lotus on paper, it looks like a concept car, and there’s one currently listed on Cars & Bids.
Let’s set our time machine to the early 1990s. Williams was absolutely killing it in Formula 1; the team won the constructors’ championship in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1997. Benetton won the title in 1995, but Renault’s image got a boost regardless because the company provided engines to both crews. Renault released the Clio Williams to test if “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” applied to the French market, and the hot hatch generated such a positive response that executives began sketching the outline of a standalone, Renault Sport-branded model.
The enthusiast community went wild when Renault unveiled the Spider at the 1995 Geneva Motor Show, and the excitement grew when the specifications were announced. The roadster tipped the scale at approximately 2,050 pounds thanks to the widespread use of aluminum, and it was powered by a mid-mounted, 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine rated at 150 horsepower. This was the same basic 16-valve engine that powered the aforementioned Clio Williams and the Mégane Coupé 16V (which, by the way, is one hell of a bargain if you want an obscure hot hatch). The original Spider wasn’t offered with a windshield, but Renault made one available shortly after the launch due to high demand.
In hindsight, adding a windshield to the list of options was Renault’s only concession in the name of comfort. The Spider wasn’t fitted with ABS brakes, and it wasn’t equipped with a heater—not in the conventional sense of the term. Renault positioned the radiator directly behind the seats, so it provided a little bit of warmth as the coolant temperature increased. The problem, or quirk, is that there was no way to turn it on or off. Having a hot radiator right behind your ass was a real boon in the winter, and a real hassle in the middle of July.
Renault built the Spider in the Dieppe, France, factory that had historically built Alpine models. This choice was both a lifeline and a punch in the face for Alpine. On one hand, the factory had been idle since it made the last A610 in 1995; Building the Spider saved quite a few jobs. On the other hand, the new roadster confirmed that the Alpine brand was dead. From that point on, sporty Renault models would land under the Renault Sport banner. Renault unexpectedly resurrected Alpine over 20 years later when it launched the second-gen A110, of course.
Precisely 1,726 units of the Spider were built between 1995 and 1999, including 80 Spider Trophy models built for a Europe-wide one-make series. The model was never sold in the United States, but the entire production run is now old enough to import. That doesn’t mean that the Spider is common: Cars & Bids has only listed one other example, which sold for $62,500 in October 2024. Bring a Trailer has listed three in the past nine years, including two that didn’t meet reserve and a Trophy-spec model that sold for $20,000 in September 2022.
Located and titled in Florida, the 1998 Spider that Cars & Bids is selling was reportedly imported from Japan, though it’s left-hand drive. It hasn’t been modified, and its odometer shows a little over 28,000 miles. It looks like it’s in excellent shape for a 27-year-old sports car.
As of writing, bidding stands at $15,805 with about three days left in the auction. There’s plenty of time for that number to increase, and nothing suggests that it won’t. Even in France, where most were sold, the Spider has become sought-after and correspondingly expensive.
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The post This ’98 Renault Spider Is About as Raw as Sports Cars Come, and It’s For Sale appeared first on The Drive.
