At $39,995, Would You Race To Buy This 1998 Renault Sport Spider?

Today’s Nice Price of No Dice Renault Sport Spider lacks any kind of full-top or side windows, making it solely a fair-weather friend. Let’s see if the price on this dealer-offered street/track car will make any friends around here.

Reggie Watts and His Hand-Me-Down Renault

Mozart’s 1786 Opera, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is considered by many to be one of Opera’s crowning achievements. The same can’t exactly be said for Nissan’s namesake Pike car, the Figaro, but the model does have its own charms. The 1998 Figaro wide-body we looked at yesterday masked many of those charms under its bulbous fiberglass fenders and its industrial gray monotone paint. That, along with a bit of a scruffy presentation, made the seller’s $11,000 asking price a bit of a stretch. In fact, it stretched all the way to an 85 percent No Dice loss.

Considering that few in the U.S. have ever seen one, I should establish at the outset just exactly what today’s 1998 Renault Sport Spider is like. I think the best way to describe it is as a Lotus Elise with the thin varnish of luxury and comfort brusquely sanded away. And, just like yesterday’s Nissan, it is now old enough to fall under the auspices of the U.S. government’s Motor Vehicle Safety Compliance Act. Coincidentally, the MVSCA, or 25-Year Rule, was enacted in 1998, making it 25 years old as well. What a coinkidink.

The point of that is that the Sport Spider was not sold in the U.S. when new. In fact, no Renaults were, as the company had closed up shop here more than a decade before. That’s too bad because the Sports Spider — the first offering of the newly created “Renault Sport” performance division — is an off-the-charts wild little sports car.

Originally designed as a track car for a bespoke racing series, the Sport Spider lacks any number of niceties, offering only the bare minimum of features to allow it to meet the EU safety, noise, and emissions standards of the time. Missing are any sort of top or side curtains. There’s also no sound deadening, stereo, or ventilation to speak of, save for all the wind blowing around the cabin at speed. What’s left is a mid-engine two-seater that tips the scales at a little over a ton and is powered by a 150-horsepower DOHC 2.0-liter four from the Clio Williams.

Renault built the Sport Spider at the Alpine factory in Dieppe, Normandy. Only 1685 rolled out the door before production was shuttered in 1999. The earliest cars produced were aimed more squarely at buyers intending to race them, lacking even a windscreen. A short windscreen and winglets were added starting with the 1997 model year. Being a 1998 model, this yellow and silver example has the screen, such as it is, swept by a single dedicated wiper.

Behind the twin buckets there’s a roll-over bar and the cabin is accessed via a pair of scissor-style doors that mask some extremely wide step-overs. The driver’s side houses the levers for the front and rear clamshells on the outside face. An all-alloy chassis underpins, fitted with racing-style cantilever coil-over shocks (transverse in front/longitudinal in the back) for suspension. A traditional five-speed manual was the only gearbox offered.

According to the ad, this dealer-sold Spider is in excellent condition and carries only 12,703 miles. The title is said to be clean, however, the car does not wear plates in the ad, and no mention is made about its import status or whether any work needs to be done to complete its compliance with the 25-Year Rule. Also unspoken is whether the car comes with its factory tonneau.

That being said, this is a weirdly wonderful little car that, while impractical as a daily driver for anyone but the most adherent Renault fan, would be a great weekend canyon carver or car show attention grabber.

To make any of that happen there’s the small matter of the seller’s $39,995 asking price. What do you think about this formerly forbidden fruit and that wide-fanning of cash? Does that seem like a deal for a rare (and desirable) if out-there little car? Or, does that price saddle this thinly veiled racer with a heavy burden?

You decide!

Portland, Oregon, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.

H/T to Bill Lyons for the hookup!

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