1996 Renault Twingo Is Today's Bring a Trailer Auction Pick

• Here's a tiny, friendly-faced city hatchback with an outsize personality.

• A masterpiece of packaging, the Twingo is roomy and comfortable, and the enormous canvas roof provides open-air motoring on demand.

• This car represents a highlight of French motoring whimsy. It's currently up for auction on Bring a Trailer.

For a country so given to Gallic shrugs and black-and-white movies crammed with ennui, France really does know how to have fun on the road. English cars have a tweedy character, Italian exotics can be fierce, but the French do a sort of wheeled quirkiness that's positively fizzing with zest. As they say, if it's not from the Champagne region, it's merely a sparkling hatchback.

Up for auction this week on Bring a Trailer—which, like Car and Driver, is part of Hearst Autos—is a cheery green example of the peak of mid-'90s French design. It's a 1996 Twingo, Renault's city-car replacement for the venerable Renault 4. Just look at this car's cherubic amphibian face, brimming with delight and ready to go careening around the streets of Paris like a motorized pinball. Doesn't it look fun?

In a world where every new SUV grimaces like a murderous electric shaver, the Twingo is a throwback to a more lighthearted era of design. It wouldn't be out of place in one of Hayao Miyazaki's movies. In fact, Japan's most beloved animator was and is partial to French motoring, having owned a series of Citroën 2CVs for decades.