RENAULT ELECTRIFIES THE CARWALK ON THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES WITH THE POP ART CAR EXHIBITION!

With Pop Art Car, we celebrate the unique place Renault holds in popular culture. Renault has always belonged to the street, to people, to the images that define our era. This exhibition captures that energy: the car becomes creative material, a pop motif, a canvas for expression. It shows how design, innovation and creativity feed one another.

Arnaud Belloni – Global Marketing Director, Renault

Pop and urban artists have always worked in close contact with everyday visual culture. Cars are objects of daily life, but also emotional icons that have inspired artists for nearly a century. Presenting these works alongside the show cars allows a new reading of popular culture to emerge and reminds us that art, like the automobile, belongs to everyone.

Catherine Gros – President of the Renault Fund for Art and Culture

An exhibition celebrating the dialogue between popular culture, the automobile and contemporary creation

By reinterpreting the codes of mass culture (bold colour, seriality, advertising, everyday objects) Pop Art accompanied the rise of the car as a symbol of modernity, freedom and social change.

From the 1970s onwards, Street Art took up this torch, planting it firmly in the street. A direct heir to Pop Art, it claims public space, spontaneity, speed of execution and immediate legibility: an art shared by all, rooted in urban everyday life and nourished by comics, music, graffiti, popular codes and counter-cultures.

It is this fertile dialogue, between Pop Art, Street Art and the automobile, that the Pop Art Car exhibition brings to light at the Défilé Renault®. By bringing these two artistic languages together, the exhibition tells a living story: that of an art that seizes the real, speaks to everyone, and transforms everyday objects, the car among them, into genuine cultural icons.

An exhibition bringing together masters of pop culture and new contemporary urban voices

The encounter between art and the automobile is far from new at Renault. As early as the 1960s, the brand opened its factories to artists and photographers to document, subvert and reveal the power of industrial material in new ways. This founding dialogue shaped an exceptional collection, featuring the likes of Doisneau, Arman, Erró, Vasarely and Dubuffet.

This heritage is the mission of the Renault Fund for Art and Culture, established in 2024: to preserve, enrich and make it accessible to the widest possible audience.

In 2025, a new milestone was reached with the creation of the Renault Art Factory, installed at the heart of the Flins plant, in a former paint workshop transformed into an artist residency spanning 3,200 m². An architectural and symbolic reinvention: a former automotive production space becomes a site for in-situ creation, where artists work in direct contact with labour history, original industrial volumes and mechanical artefacts left in place.

The Fund continues its commitment to the public by lending major works from its collection to the Pop Art Car exhibition, creating an immersive journey from historical Pop Art to contemporary urban creation:

• Invader's tribute to Formula 1 racing through his celebrated mosaics referencing the world of video games (Pole Position, 2008). For the exhibition, a previously unseen work will be presented to the public for the very first time.
• Victor Vasarely, father of Op Art, and Erró of the leading figures of Narrative Figuration - the French strand of Pop Art - represented here by four works.
• The Luncheon on the Grass reinterpreted in spray paint by Jean Faucheur, co-founder of the Frères Ripoulin group.
• Bold works inspired by pop culture by D*Face and Lee Quinones.
• Works rooted in New York graffiti culture by John "Crash" Matos.
• Also featured is Arman's Accumulation Renault n°115 (1967), composed of Renault logos encased in plexiglass (150 × 200 cm) - an iconic example of his serial work focused on mass-produced objects.

The car as art object: show cars, design and iconic reinventions

The Carwalkramp, inspired by racing circuits and designed by architect Franklin Azzi — becomes a spectacular exhibition space. Several show cars are on display, true hybrid creations blending art, design, and innovation:

• Suite N°4 by Mathieu Lehanneur (2021)

Created to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Renault 4, the SUITE N°4 concept by designer Mathieu Lehanneur — who also designed the torch and cauldron for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games — is conceived as a true 'open-air hotel suite'. The aim was to breathe new magic into the legend of the '4L' by merging automobile and architecture, offering a poetic, minimalist mobility experience in which light, space, and escape redefine the very idea of travel. On the roof, a grid of solar panels allows sunlight to filter through transparently, while simultaneously helping to recharge the battery of the retrofitted, now 100% electric vehicle.

• R5 reimagined by Pierre Gonalons (2022)

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Renault 5, Renault partnered with French designer Pierre Gonalons to create an original electric show car. The result: a pop icon transformed into a rolling jewel, reinterpreting the boldness of the seventies through a 100% electric lens, blending artisanal craft, sophisticated colours and details drawn from fine jewellery. On the dashboard, three round digital gauges paying homage to watchmaking display the essential information: speed, charge and time.

• Twingo by Sabine Marcelis (2023)

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Twingo, Renault commissioned Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis to revisit this iconic model around its three most recognisable traits: its emblematic monovolume silhouette, its distinctive headlights, and its modular interior with its remarkable sense of space and light. The result is a true luminous manifesto, brought to life through plays of transparency, vibrant materials and a sculptural approach to light — elevating a city car to the status of art object. A Twingo like no other, yet faithful to the very essence of the iconic model, thirty years on.

• Bourgeon and Accrescent by Dan Rawlings (2024)

In 2024, British street artist Dan Rawlings spent several weeks in residence at the heart of the ElectriCity plant in Douai, creating two original poetic works from a Renault 5 E-Tech electric and a classic Renault 5. The result was the sculptural poems Bourgeon and Accrescent — intricate traceries of sculpted metal resembling brambles and foliage, in which nature seems to reclaim the machine, offering an organic and emotional vision of the dialogue between the automobile and contemporary art.

• R17 Electric Restomod x Ora Ïto (2024)

In collaboration with Renault's design team, globe-trotting designer Ora Ïto has created an electric automotive sculpture blending seventies heritage with pure futurism. The R17 electric restomod x Ora Ïto is a retro-futurist, elegant and sleek reinterpretation of the Renault 17 coupé, celebrating its avant-garde character in a striking dialogue between pop culture, design and innovation. Inside, the original defining themes of the R17 are reinterpreted through a strongly geometric formal language, transporting occupants into the comfortable world of furniture and interior design.

• Renault 5 Turbo 3E Show Car (2022)

Foreshadowing the production Renault 5 Turbo 3E, this show car was unveiled at the 2022 Paris Motor Show as an electric reinterpretation of the original Renault 5 Turbo — combining unapologetic exuberance with top-level performance, with a strong focus on fun and gaming culture. Built for performance and dedicated to drifting, the Renault 5 Turbo 3E show car features a rear-wheel-drive architecture with two electric motors each driving a single wheel, and batteries positioned centrally beneath the floor. Mounted on a tubular chassis, protected by a flat underbody and surrounded by FIA-certified roll hoops, the powertrain delivers a total output of 280 kW (the equivalent of 380 hp) and 700 Nm of torque, available instantaneously.

• Filante Record 2025

The Renault Filante Record 2025 draws inspiration from the record-breaking 40 CV of 1925 and the Étoile Filante of 1956, both of which set landmark records in their day. Designed as a laboratory for electric efficiency, this demonstrator pushes the boundaries of aerodynamics and energy performance. Weighing just 1,000 kg, it features cutting-edge technologies including steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire, ultra-lightweight materials, and 3D printing. Honed in the wind tunnel, its silhouette demonstrates the key role of design in the pursuit of maximum efficiency.

Equipped with an 87 kWh battery, the Renault Filante Record 2025 set an efficiency record last December, covering 1,008 km in under 10 hours at an average speed of 102 km/h, with a consumption of just 7.8 kWh/100 km. At the end of the run, 11% battery charge remained, equivalent to over 120 additional kilometres at speeds above 100 km/h.

A vibrant programme open to all

To bring the exhibition to life, a series of events will punctuate the coming weeks. Admission is free, with registration available on the events page of the website - https://ledefile.renault.com/fr/evenements :

• A live performance by artist Joshua Vides, creating an artwork on a Twingo E-Tech electric from 9 to 11 April;
• Talks bringing together artists, curators, designers, and automotive design experts;
• DJ sets with Radio FG;
• Guided tours exploring how Renault's industrial history fuels contemporary creation.

With the Pop Art Car exhibition, the Carwalkreaffirms its role as a living cultural venue, where art spills beyond gallery walls to meet visitors along the Champs-Élysées. This unique Paris destination combines a showroom presenting the brand's latest models (Twingo E-Tech electric, Clio 6) alongside the current range (Renault 4 E-Tech electric, Renault 5 E-Tech electric, Scenic E-Tech electric and Rafale), as well as a café and a boutique stocking The Originals merchandise., Clio 6).