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Tuesday, April 22, 2025

New Movie Friday On Petrolicious: A Maxi-Mum Turbocharged Journey


Petrolicious, the creator of high quality, unique movies and articles for traditional automobile fanatics, has launched its newest video, that includes automotive devotee Juan Carlos Fernandez who labored onerous to revive the Group B rally legend of his desires.

After a few years away, the Petrolicious web site and YouTube Channel has been just lately rebooted by duPont REGISTRY Group, and new movies are actually dropping each Friday. Petrolicious celebrates the innovations, the personalities, and the aesthetics that ignite a collective lust for nice automotive machines, and it seeks to tell, entertain, and encourage its neighborhood of aficionados and pique the curiosity of those that have been lacking out.

At this time, Petrolicious takes up Juan’s story…

It’s akin to touchdown a dream job you lied by way of your tooth to get. You stroll in on day one, staring down a pile of tasks you aren’t remotely certified for. The job? Managing a automobile with a 1.5-liter turbo engine operating round 2 bar of enhance mounted the place the groceries used to go. No airbag, no abs, no coaching wheels. Simply determine it out earlier than you get fired or, on this case, despatched backward by way of a guardrail. Your new boss, (who ignores OSHA and HR) the Renault R5 Maxi Turbo, expects outcomes.

Juan Carlos Fernandez is aware of what it’s like to begin from nothing. In 1963, his household fled Cuba with an toddler Juan in tow, forsaking their residence, their belongings, every thing that they had ever recognized. They landed in Puerto Rico with no roadmap, simply the necessity to survive. His dad and mom labored tirelessly to rebuild, instilling in him the form of work ethic that doesn’t ask for shortcuts.

By the point he was a youngster, vehicles had his full consideration. His cousins had been within the auto enterprise, and he scraped collectively no matter he might to purchase his first automobile, a $200 mission. One automobile was two. Two was three. The hustle by no means stopped. If he wanted extra money, he labored more durable. A long time later, that drive was Ferco Motors, the dealership he owns in the present day. 

A good friend as soon as informed him the R5 was “so ugly it’s stunning,” however to Juan, it was simply stunning. It had character, presence, and the form of uncooked, unfiltered driving expertise that trendy vehicles have misplaced. It wasn’t constructed for straight-line velocity or easy efficiency, it was constructed to be pushed onerous, to demand one thing from the driving force. And that’s precisely what drew him to it.

The R5 is a product of Renault’s obsession with Group B, the golden period of rally racing the place producers constructed probably the most excessive machines they might get away with. The FIA required producers to construct a restricted variety of road-going variations to compete, and Renault’s reply was to take their humble economic system hatch and reimagine it into one thing wild. Prone to boiling issues down, and for the sake of brevity we’ll simply say the engine was moved to the again, the physique was widened, and the facility was turned up. The outcome was the R5 Turbo. 

That automobile made its competitors debut in 1980 on the Tour de Corse, a rally recognized for its tight, twisting tarmac levels. French driver Jean Ragnotti piloted the automobile and, regardless of being up in opposition to far more developed machines, confirmed its potential. The true breakthrough got here the next 12 months when Ragnotti drove the R5 Turbo to an outright victory on the 1981 Monte Carlo Rally. It was undoubtedly good, however… was extra doable? 

Enter the R5 Maxi Turbo, the last word model, the ultimate boss. It was constructed to compete with the Audi Quattro and the Peugeot 205 T16. Positively a tricky crowd. Renault introduced in Bozian Racing, a French motorsport engineering agency recognized for squeezing each final drop of efficiency out of small-displacement engines. On this case, they pulled 350 horsepower out of Renault’s 1.5L engine. They made the automobile stiffer and elevated the work aerodynamics had been doing.  It had some success in competitors and proved its mettle on tarmac, however as all-wheel-drive rivals took over, its time on the filth and within the highlight pale. 

Juan’s R5 wasn’t good when he purchased it. It had been sitting, uncared for, and the primary drive was a disappointment. No enhance, a failing clutch, only a reminder that even the greats want work, and time spares nobody, and no factor. However with the proper experience, the proper folks, and a variety of effort, it got here again to life, a worthy tribute to the Group B legend. 

Juan Carlos Fernandez didn’t get right here by taking the simple approach. He got here from nothing, labored for every thing, and by no means requested for a shortcut. The R5 doesn’t give one both. It simply desires you to point out up for work.


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