Team have customized a Renault Twingo to take to famous 24-hours endurance race at the Nürburgring, and it could win

A team have customized a Renault Twingo to take on a 24 hour endurance race at the Nürburgring – and it has a good chance of winning.

When you think of the Twingo, you don’t think of a speedy racer.

A reliable daily driver, sure. But hardly a speed demon on the track.

But a German based team have decided to make the car over into an endurance machine.

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Turning a Renault Twingo into a race car for the Nürburgring

For those not in the know, the Nürburgring 24 Hours is exactly as it sounds.

It’s a yearly 24 hour endurance race, which pits more than 700 drivers and 200 cars against each other.

The race was first held in 1970, and to date BMW is the manufacturer with the most wins at 20.

In the 2023 event, a Ferrari 296 came first with 162 laps completed on a 15.7 mile track.

So why did Rauh Racing decide to take on a Twingo as their project for the 2026 event?

Speaking to CarThrottle, Felix Rauh said: “If we want to get into racing, we needed a car that is firstly cheap, and secondly, popular, so that we can attract a big audience and maybe sponsors as well.

“And if this project is not going to work, at least we have a Twingo.”

That’s one way of finding the positive in the situation.

Most of the car’s internal parts are being transferred from a Renaultsport Clio 172.

Filip Rauh claimed that the idea came from an old forum post in which someone claimed to have put a Clio’s engine into a Twingo.

With engine swaps being allowed in the Nürburgring 24 Hours, they decided to give it a go for themselves.

The engine can produce up to 238 brake horsepower – slightly lower than horsepower, as it takes power lost due to friction into account.

Although the engine has been put into the Twingo, there’s still a lot of work to be done before it’ll be ready for racing.

Filip told CarThrottle: “The Twingo is our brand for now, but we want to turn obscure cars into motorsport legends.”

Other unlikely modifications

Putting a fast engine into a relatively normal car sounds like a fun experiment – we’ll be watching with bated breath to see how they get on in 2026.

But this isn’t the first time that a quirky modification has been undertaken.

Elsewhere in Germany, a Fiat 500 was modified to fall under the law as a motorcycle.

That way, teenagers can drive them unsupervised.

We’ve also seen Audis modified for use on ski slopes and Cybertrucks turned into cop cars.

Basically, as long as you have the funds, the skills and a big imagination, most car modifications are achieveable.