The Murena inherited the Bagheera's mid-engined layout and hatchback body shape, but substantial changes were made to address some of the problems with the previous model, among which were a lack of power, absence of a 5-speed transmission option, and a chassis extremely prone to rust.

The chassis differed from the Bagheera's in two significant ways; the rear cradle was reconfigured to accommodate a new rear suspension system, and the entire chassis was galvanised to prevent the Murena from falling victim to the rust problems that plagued the Bagheera.

[3] The new galvanised chassis coupled with the composite panels made the car essentially immune to rust, except for the rear suspension's trailing arms.

At the rear, the Bagheera's torsion bar suspension was replaced by semi-trailing arms with coil springs mounted on telescopic hydraulic shock absorbers.

This kit was initially a dealer-installed option, but the last 480 Murenas came with this uprated engine directly from the factory.

The Murena received a 5-speed manual transaxle derived from that of the Citroën CX (or depending on the model year the Lancia Beta).

He also wrote that, although not a sprinter, when it came to sustaining high speeds on winding roads "the Murena ranks high — better than the basic Porsche 924, every bit as good as the Lancia Monte Carlo, and losing only in sheer agility to the Fiat X1/9, while it shows up the Porsche 911 as ill-balanced and inept" and went on write that this "is one of the most sweetly responsive cars that ever offered a driver a choice of how to steer through a bend."

The black interior was introduced and colours added, the bordeaux color was removed from the option list.

In 1981, a Murena prepared by Politecnic and equipped with an engine built by Bernard “Nanard” Mangé and Dany Snobeck (operating under the name “SODEMO”) was entered in the Rallye Monte Carlo.

[12] Cars were prepared by Marcel Morel (Maurelec) and Politecnic for the French Rallyecross championship, of which Morel was the only one to use a Murena 1.6 as the base model, Politecnic only used modified 2.2s, either with ROC engines or SODEMO prepared engines.

Race-tuned Murenas prepared by Politecnic produced the following results: Drivers included Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Max Mamers, Rémy Julienne, Jean-Pierre Jaussaud, Johnny Servoz-Gavin, Jean-Claude Andruet, Marcel Morel and Philippe Wambergue.