Renault 12 Gordini: Front paws in need of lion claws

High hopes. Renault expectations that its new 12 Gordini would soar to greater heights of motor sport success than its R8 predecessor would not be met. The switch from rear engine/rear wheel drive to front engine/front wheel drive proved to be a critical shortcoming in competition use. (Image from: www.telegraph.co.uk)

Renault Australia’s victory over the Holden Dealer Team in the 1970 Australian Rally Championship, using its potent R8 Gordinis, had such a positive effect on image and sales that the company was keen to launch another assault in 1972 with its new front wheel drive Renault 12 Gordini – but this time Holden’s lion was roaring and ready to pounce.

A year is a long time in motor sport and by the time the new works-backed Renault 12 Gordini attack led by 1970 ARC champion Bob Watson was underway, Holden’s LC Torana GTR XU-1 had more than a season of intense competition and development behind it.

This resulted in a fast, agile and rugged rally weapon that clinched the 1971 ARC title. And for 1972, the LC had been replaced by the latest LJ model, powered by a larger and more powerful 3.3 litre (202 cid) version of Holden’s triple-carbed hot six that promised to make life even harder for the competition.

Even so, given Renault’s audacious 1970 ARC win and the French marque’s renowned commitment to competition excellence, its latest rally weapon was considered a threat to HDT’s dominance even before the first shot was fired in the 1972 ARC war.

The new Renault 12 sedan in standard form was an advanced car for its time and, with a very light kerb weight below 1000 kgs, was considered an excellent starting point for the development of another Gordini-tweaked competition car.

Australian rally champion Bob Watson flings the agile Renault 12 Gordini through the forests during a special stage of the 1971 Dulux Rally. The new car showed great potential on debut, finishing fourth against quality opposition. Another four Gordinis were shipped in for the 1972 season. (Image from: www.bobwatsonrally.com.au)

Released in Australia in 1970, the front-engined/front wheel drive Renault 12 was designed to fill the gap between the rear-engine/rear wheel drive R8/R10 models and the larger front engine/front wheel drive Renault 16.

The original Renault 12 featured a longitudinally-mounted 1289cc four cylinder pushrod engine (early Australian models had a unique 1251cc version to meet local tariff laws) and four-speed manual gearbox in a sharply styled and rigid unitary body. The entire engine and clutch housing were located forward of the front axle line.

Supple long travel suspension via front coil-over shocks and a well located hollow beam rear axle combined good ground clearance with excellent handling, enhanced by responsive rack and pinion steering and powerful front disc brakes.

Given the success of the R8 Gordini in 1970, in which Bob Watson and navigator Jim McAuliffe toppled the HDT’s mighty GTS Monaros and Torana GTRs, the impending debut in Australia of the latest hot Renault in the ARC created great interest.

Although not sold here, the Renault 12 Gordini was seen as another ‘halo’ car by Renault Australia. It was hoped it could establish a similar sporting profile to that of the R8, at a time when emerging Japanese brands like Datsun and Mitsubishi were making their presence felt in local rallying and winning plenty of admirers in the youth market as a result.

Up and away! Queensland’s Brian Michelmore takes flight in the 1972 KLG Rally of the Hills in NSW. Although the works-backed Renault 12 Gordini was amongst the early pace-setters, Michelmore failed to finish the event.

Like the R8 version, the Renault 12 Gordini was designed by Amedee Gordini, the brilliant Italian-born Parisian with a rare genius for extracting staggering levels of performance from Renault’s production-based engines.

Gordini replaced the 12’s 1289cc engine with a larger 1565cc unit based on the all-aluminium Renault 16 engine. Loaded with quality internals and fed by a pair of 45mm DCOE twin-choke Webers, this big breathing, pushrod, two-valve-per-cylinder, inline four capped with a finned aluminium rocker cover was claimed to produce 125 bhp (more than double that of the standard Renault 12) and propel the little Renault sedan to a top speed of 185 km/h.

The new Gordini also featured a close ratio five-speed gearbox and other competition upgrades including four-wheel disc brakes (ventilated front, solid rear) and more than double the standard fuel capacity thanks to a huge 89-litre tank. No-frills interior trim and removal of the front and rear steel bumpers minimised weight.

Bob Watson giving it everything on the Mount Ginn dirt circuit special stage during the 1972 Dulux Rally. The 1970 ARC champion could not improve on his previous year’s fourth placing, finishing eighth overall in an event dominated by Torana GTR XU-1s which filled the first three places.

The Australian RHD Gordinis

According to 1970 ARC champion Bob Watson, who also managed Renault Australia’s competition program at the time, the company shipped in a small batch of new left hand drive Renault 12 Gordinis with a plan to again dominate Australian rallying at state and national level.

“The first one came out for the Dulux Rally in 1971 (finished 4^th) and in early 1972 another four cars arrived, so we ended up with five in total,” he told the Shannons Club

“The plan was that one car would go to each (Renault driving) state rally champion from the year before, so one went to Rod Slater in Western Australia, another went to Tom Barr-Smith in South Australia, Bruce Collier got the NSW car and the Queensland car went to Brian Michelmore.

“As they had to be road registered for rally use, they were all converted to right hand drive at the competition department in Melbourne. The car I drove in the ARC was also prepared there under Enzo Dozzi, while the others were sent to each of the state guys to do their own preparations.”

Watson and navigator Geoff Thomas speeding through a competitive night stage during the 1972 Australian Rally Championship. The works Renaults had no answer for the highly developed Torana GTR XU-1s during 1972.

According to Watson, the works-prepared Renault 12 Gordini engines like the previous R8s were upgraded with factory developed rally kits, which were boxed and shipped direct to Australia from Renault’s competition department in Europe.

These competition-grade components included 11.5:1 high compression pistons and new cylinder sleeves with larger bores that raised the stock Gordini’s capacity from 1565cc to 1596cc.

Combined with wilder camshaft profiles, stronger valve springs and special exhaust extractors, the rally kits raised the power output from 125 to a piping hot 160 bhp at 7,200 rpm, along with a useful increase in torque.

“When we developed the first car for the Dulux Rally in 1971, we found that the standard air cleaner housing on the car was very restrictive,” Watson said.

“I think we got about 12-15 extra horsepower just by changing it to a more open set-up. It was very cramped because the Gordini engine had two big side-draught Webers hanging off the side of it and they were hard up against the inner guard. It was difficult to get a decent air filter onto them but we worked it out.”

Maximum attack! With the dominant HDT absent, Watson and navigator Jeff Beaumont were fast and competitive in the opening stages of the 1972 Southern Cross International Rally. Sadly they were forced to retire with gearbox failure when holding down fifth place against top Mitsubishi and Datsun works entries.

1972 ARC: Toranas too strong

Despite thorough preparations by Renault Australia, the more powerful and theoretically faster Renault 12 Gordinis were a disappointment. The 1972 edition of the Australian Motoring Yearbook neatly summed up the Renault works team’s difficult season:

“The failure of the front wheel drive R12 Gordini to emulate the convincing successes of its victorious predecessor, the R8 Gordini (rear engine, rear wheel drive) is not easily explained.

“On paper it looks to be a faster car but, in practice, it just has not been getting the results. Occasionally the car, in the hands of Bob Watson, has shown flashes of brilliance, but the results are not there.

“Of course much of everybody else’s failure can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the Torana XU-1 and the Holden Dealer Team, led by the legendary Harry Firth. They are simply too fast, too reliable, too well driven and navigated and too well organised to give anyone else a chance.”

And that was the 1972 ARC in a nutshell. HDT’s Toranas won five of the six events, with 1971 champions Colin Bond and George Shepheard claiming their second ARC title in succession.

Best result for the Renault 12 Gordinis was a second place for Tom Barr-Smith/Rob Hunt in the South Australian round (ARC rounds often doubled as state championship rounds). Watson and Geoff Thomas finished a frustrating third at Victoria’s Akademos Rally, after sliding off the road on the final stage when equal on points with the leading XU-1s.

The Renault 12 Gordini competed in European rallying, but it could not match the success of its R8 predecessor. The problem was largely blamed on the reduced traction available from the front wheel drive design and understeer caused by the 'pendulum effect' of the entire engine being mounted ahead of the front axle line. (Image from: www.mad-spark.com)

On reflection, Watson said it was a combination of the Renault 12’s front wheel drive configuration, technical problems with the gearboxes and the formidable speed and reliability of the XU-1s that conspired against the Gordinis in 1972.

“They weren’t really competitive against the Toranas,” he admitted. “By that stage the XU-1s were  quite highly developed and Harry had discovered these Goodyear Ultragrip tyres which he got from the States that were a lot wider than anything else available and gave them a lot more traction.

“We were really battling with only 1600cc. And with front wheel drive, the 12’s were no good at going up hills either. In events like those in the (Victorian) goldfields country, where the forests were generally flat and the roads were very twisty our car was just as quick, but we couldn’t match the power and traction of the Torana going up hills.

“In events like the Snowy Mountains or the Alpine, we had no chance. Plus they were using locker diffs by then and we didn’t have a locker or even a limited slip diff that was suitable.

“Another problem with our car was that it was geared too high, because it was actually built for racing rather than rallying. So what we ended up doing in the ARC was replace the close ratio five-speed gearbox with a four-speed because we could get a much lower diff ratio for that. You never used fifth anyway, so that was no great loss.

The Renault 12 did not compete in the Bathurst 500/1000 but did establish a race track presence in the mid-1970s thanks to the Renault ‘Newstar’ series. This one-make competition for showroom stock Renault 12s was designed as a low-cost entry into motor sport and provided some entertaining racing. Hot Gordini versions were not allowed to compete.

“We never had much luck with the gearboxes though. Peter Hollinger had a go at building a couple for us, but the light alloy casing distorted too much when it got hot and all the clearances went haywire, so we were breaking gears and crown wheels and pinions and all sorts of things. Peter said he just couldn’t make it work using that gearbox casing because it distorted too much, but under the rules we had choice.”

At the end of a disappointing season, Renault Australia’s head office decided to withdraw from direct involvement in motor sport and shut down its competition department in early 1973. After enjoying such great success in 1970, it was a bitter pill for Watson to swallow.

“The R12 Gordini was never as successful as the R8 Gordini which is why it didn’t last long (in production),” he lamented.

“At the end of that year I think Renault Australia was also really starting to struggle in the market. They replaced the 12 and 16 with models that were much inferior plus there was a big jump in price, so a lot of people just dumped the Renault brand and went and bought Japanese cars instead.”

In his stripped-out lightweight Renault 12 Gordini, Bob Watson attracted strong crowd support as he tried valiantly to topple Peter Brock’s supercharged HDT Torana at Calder Park rallycross events in 1972. Once up to full speed, the little Renault was remarkably fast.

Rallycross weapon!

In addition to forest rallies, the high-revving Renault 12 Gordini followed in the muddy wheel tracks of the R8 in tackling rallycross, when this exciting new brand of motor sport was at its peak of popularity in Australia in 1972-73.

Rallycross consisted of four cars from a standing start competing for several laps over a man-made course that was partly bitumen race track and partly dirt, with large jumps and water splashes added to provide some spectacular action (see Youtube clip at the end of this story).

In a stripped-out, lightweight R8 Gordini, Bob Watson won several events and posed the greatest threat to Peter Brock during 1970-71, who in his supercharged HDT LC Torana GTR had become known as the ‘King of Calder’ due to his dominance of the rallycross meetings held at the Melbourne circuit.

Watson updated to the latest Renault 12 Gordini for 1972, as rallycross was seen as an excellent promotional tool for Renault, playing the part of ‘David’ against the ‘Goliath’ that HDT’s purpose-built 320bhp supercharged Torana truly represented!

Watson followed HDT’s lead in 1973 by adapting a Rootes-type supercharger to his 1.6 litre Gordini engine to try to get on even terms with HDT’s dominant Torana. Despite a big power increase, traction remained a problem.

“To build the rallycross car, we just started with a new body shell we took straight off the assembly line so it would be as light as possible without any joint sealants, anti-drum compounds and all that. We then put a roll cage and all the 1.6 Gordini running gear into it and had a crack at Brock,” Watson recalled.

“There was one meeting (see Youtube clip) where Peter and I had a real ding-dong struggle and after I went over the jump the last time and came onto the bitumen to go down to the finish line, he had a big lose, went sideways and I bloody near got him - he beat me by about a metre! It was probably  the closest finish there’s ever been in rallycross.

“In 1973 we followed HDT’s lead and supercharged the engine using a Rootes-type blower. It was good and it gave a lot more power.  From memory it went from 160bhp up to about 200 bhp, but of course you needed good traction to fully benefit from it.”

Watson locked in battle with another Torana GTR at Calder Park driven with great verve by Gil Davis. Rallycross often featured close and exciting racing like this. It was a shame the sport only lasted a few seasons in Australia.

According to Watson, the Renault 12 Gordini’s major drawback in rallycross was again front wheel drive as it suffered the handicap of rearward weight transfer during the standing starts. This lifted the front end slightly, causing the front wheels to spin too much. Once up to full speed, though, the car was very quick.

“It wasn’t bad but it just missed out by a little bit off the start line and when you were up against Brock in that supercharged Torana, with its dual rear wheels and all, he’d always beat us into the first turn.”