An artist has added lightness and electricity to the original Renault Twingo

The original Renault Twingo could be thought of as one of the fastest cars in the world... using a generous application of ‘holiday rental car’ logic (rentals being the very fastest things on four wheels, of course). First unveiled in 1993, Brits could only sample Renault’s lightweight, cleverly designed city runabout while in Europe.

Which must mean its return as an even lighter, one-off EV pushes it into the realms of supercar pace. Maybe. Anyway, this is an artist’s reinterpretation of one of the coolest and best-designed small cars ever made.

The artist in question is one Sabine Marcelis, winner of the ELLE DECO International Designer of the Year Award, who has honed in on the Twingo’s “most recognisable features”. Such features include “its iconic single-volume silhouette, its characteristic headlights, its modular interior with its incredible sense of space and luminosity”. Remember upon its launch at the turn of the Nineties, this design - aping the one-box silhouette of the Espace - was deemed radical.

Sabine's gutted the baby car and stripped everything back to those elements, all the while working on “the play of transparency and the interplay between colour and materials”. It’s a cool-looking thing, no doubt.

“Working on such an iconic and popular car was a real challenge, especially given the scale of the project,” said Sabine. “It was an opportunity to create something truly innovative and memorable.”

Electric, too. We’re not told what sort of powertrain lurks underneath the Twingo’s monobox, only that “the concept has been retrofitted with an electric motor”. Renault’s quite good at those – witness the gloriously unhinged R5 Turbo 3E – so deploying electric-power in a car so small and light could make it... one of the fastest cars in the world. Maybe.