Megane RenaultSport

WE SAY: THE BATTLE FOR THE HOT-HATCH CROWN IS ABOUT TO GET WAY MORE DRAMATIQUE...

For a car with such a defned mission statement, the new Megane RS is multi-faceted. You can choose between a Sport or Cup chassis, and a 6spd manual or dual-shift EDC ’box, although the motive power is supplied by a reworked version of the group’s turbo’d 1.8-litre engine, good for 277bhp and 288lb ft, whichever one you go for. Motorsport trickle-down is present in the Diamond-Like Carbon in the valve-gear and mirror bore coating inside the cylinders, Renault reckons. Emissions have been cut by

11 per cent to 155g/km CO (on the smallest wheels), fuel consumption is up eight per cent for a best combined fgure of 40.9mpg.

There’s more. The Megane RS also uses Renault’s 4Control four-wheel steering to enhance cornering agility, what it calls PerfoHub (similar to the Focus RS’s RevoKnuckle and the Astra VXR’s HiPer strut) to separate the forces acting on drive and steering, optimise the front-end suspension geometry and hydraulic bump stops on all four corners. The Cup car also gains a Torsen mechanical slippy dif. That’s some trick stuf, right there. Look past the lysergic orange paintjob, and the visual diferences are about as subtle as these things get. The front wings are 60mm wider than the Megane GT’s, 45mm chunkier at the rear. There’s a new air intake in the front bumper, a 3D honeycomb mesh in the grille, air extractors in the front wheelarches, and the rear end gets a difuser and central exhaust outlet. It’s a greatlooking car, possibly even the prettiest hot hatch of all, and much closer to the VW Golf GTI end of the sliding scale of hot-hatch extroversion than the Honda Civic Type R.

Inside, the RS gets new sports seats with integral headrests, an overly chunky wheel, and a choice of carbon grey woven fabric or Alcantara on the seats. Which are excellent. Renault’s fddlesome R-link touchscreen is as confounding to use as ever, possibly more so now that it also boasts an RS monitor on top of its previous audio and climate responsibilities. We’re talking telemetry

and data acquisition, corralled by 40-plus sensors around the car, and taking in acceleration, braking, yaw, steering angle, and what the 4Control system is up to. For people with too much time on their hands, all this stuf can be uploaded to the RS Replay website. Everyone else should go for another drive, and be done with it.

Renault wanted a car for all seasons, and the RS feels very grown-up at everyday speeds. There’s no question those hydraulic bump stops – a secondary piston inside dissipates the energy before it registers with the wheel – help the RS’s rebound characteristics, overall comfort levels, and its ability to shirk of surface disruptions at high speed. Factor in that active rear axle, and this thing can generate jowl-fapping cornering loads.

It’s also fast, without being in-yourface. OK, so the AWD contenders serve up a chunk more power, and the Type R manages more grunt and marginally more torque through its front wheels alone to spectacular efect. But the Renault is right up there at the pointy end when it comes to meaningful real-world performance. Our on-road test car was ftted with the EDC 6spd dual-shift ’box, used elsewhere in the Renault range but beefed up and given new ratios and a bespoke shift pattern here. It’s not as instant as the Golf GTI’s overly digitised DSG, but it has more texture. Renault’s MultiSense software works across Comfort, Normal, Sport and Race to quicken response, pump up the engine noise, and loosen the ESP reins. It’s pleasingly slidey, although we’d recommend fddling about with the settings to bring the noise but keep some of the electronic sentinels on duty. The Megane RS can cover ground at a supercar-shaming pace, riding a thick wodge of mid-range torque rather than hunting down the red line in every gear. Perhaps the steering could be a little more feelsome and authentic, but we’re splitting hairs.

Some unexpected confusion arises when we try the Cup car, the one with the Torsen dif, 10 per cent stifer suspension set-up, and a proper 6spd manual gearbox (RenaultSport is still working on integrating the EDC with the Torsen dif – it’ll arrive later in 2018). This is the model Fabien Berthomieu, performance guru at RenaultSport, reckons they’ll sell more of in the UK and Japan, and it’s the one I expected to love. Didn’t quite pan out that way, although a downpour the night before obviously compressed the margin for error during a session on the brilliant Jerez circuit. Subjectively, the Civic Type R has the edge on-track, genuinely feels like it’s hustling the air around its body to tangibly greater confdence-inspiring downforce-y efect. Its gearbox is more satisfying than the Megane’s manual, too, and while the RS’s Brembos are great in action (355mm diameter upfront), they could use a little more feel. We were on the bigger optional Bridgestone Potenzas, by the way: 245/35 R19s.

Rarely has a group test recalibrating the hot-hatch pecking order been a more tantalising prospect. For cars that use such a relatively simple recipe, the latest breed are impressively nuanced machines. Quite where the Megane RS fts in the hierarchy is impossible to say in isolation, but if it lands in the UK at the sub-£30k threshold Renault is suggesting, and you spec it carefully, it might just have the edge. Standby for freworks.

“The Megane RS can cover ground at a supercar-shaming pace”