RENAULT MEGANE R26.R 2008

PRICE THEN/NOW: £22,990/£21,000+ TARGET AUDIENCE: The TG editorial staff, all the time.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Those lucky enough to have driven the stripped-out, PVC-windowed R26.R on a bone dry, rubbery racetrack recall the experience on a spiritual level: the miraculous sensation of being at one with a hot hatch that connected its driver almost bodily to the tarmac beneath. Those unlucky enough to have driven the R26.R on a cold, rainy evening on the M25 remember it rather less fondly. Think ‘unscheduled root canal extraction during global anaesthetic shortage’.

Thanks to tyres that qualified as ‘road legal’ in much the same way that snooker qualifies as ‘sport’ (ie on a strictly technical but in no way meaningful level), the R26.R is, in the wet, an utter pig. In the dry, it is perhaps the greatest-driving hot hatch of them all.