It’s no Golf GTI (which is the point)
If you like your hot hatches rounded, give VW a call. If you like them wild, you need a Megane RS, right? Ben Barry investigates (at speed)
If you want your hot hatch to do everything, you buy a Volkswagen Golf GTI. If you want it to be a great hot hatch – pin-sharp handling, punchy acceleration, blatty exhaust – you buy a Renault Sport Megane. That might be an over-simplification given there’s serious opposition from Hyundai and Honda to muddy the waters these days, but Renault Sport has nailed the putting-the-smile-on-your-face aspect of hot-hatch ownership for over a decade.
Now we have six months with the new Megane RS Trophy, enough to take us through the over-eager honeymoon period and into the reality of mpg, reliability, practicality… Well, okay, I won’t go on too much on the humdrum stuff – this is a Trophy, after all, so its raison d’etre is driving thrills, not supermarket runs. And I promise, no trips to the tip. But an extended test does allow us to paint a fuller picture of life with a car we’ve only ever experienced fleetingly before. I’m looking forward to it immensely.
CAR rated the third-generation Megane RS highly when we tried it on the press launch last year. Save for big departures in the shape of a five-door-only bodyshell and rear-wheel steering, it follows a similar recipe to its brilliant predecessor with front-wheel drive, trick PerfoHub front suspension, torsion-beam rear and a fourcylinder turbo engine, downsized from 2.0 litres to 1.8 for the latest generation.
The manual gearbox also continues – maybe, like Porsche’s GT3, Renault got burned by deciding to offer only a dual-clutch ’box on the Clio RS – and while you can get a dual-clutch gearbox (for £1.7k) with launch control and multi-downchange function and a 15lb ft slug of extra torque too, the manual fights back with extra driver involvement/workload, and a manual handbrake (the auto gets an e-handbrake).
Buyers again get to choose between the regular Sport or the firmer Cup chassis, which adds just under £2k. The Trophy we’re running takes things further. (The Trophy-R, tested in CAR August, takes them further still.) The headlines focus on a new engine tune that nudges power up from 276bhp – slightly underwhelming in the context of the competition – to a healthier if still far from class-leading 296bhp, partly thanks to a larger turbo with ceramic bearings.
Trophy-spec cars also get the Cup chassis (with the Cup’s 25 per
Power is up to a still far from class-leading 296bhp thanks in part to a ceramic turbocharger
cent firmer shocks, 30 per cent stiffer springs and 10 per cent stiffer anti-roll bars), a Torsen limited-slip diff and the 19-inch wheels (not the 18s standard on Sport models), which save 2kg each. Bridgestone Potenzas are standard, as are bi-material Brembo brakes with 355mm front discs. You’ll pay from £31,835 for a Trophy, compared with £27,810 for a base RS. It’s slightly more than a basic Honda Civic Type R, and a couple of grand up on the Hyundai i30N Performance.
On top of that, our test car has £4250 of options: Liquid Yellow metallic paint (£1300); upgraded Bose stereo (£800); rear parking camera and front parking sensors (£400); and the Visio system, which includes lane-departure warning, trac-sign recognition and an automatic high/low-beam function (£250).
Even though it’s a Trophy, you don’t get the alcantara Recaro sports seats as standard – they’re part of a further £1500 upgrade. Because they look and feel so good, and they’re also 20mm lower set, you can bet that secondhand buyers won’t be interested in a car that doesn’t have them fitted.
The total for our car is £36,085: a good chunk of cash for a hot hatch. It’s already run-in, with over 3000 miles on the clock, so we’re straight down to business – and our first few drives suggest we’re in for an exciting half-year.