Seven Renaults for £72,140

8

Dan Bevis

Renault has caused a few monocles to plummet into Pastis this week by announcing that their spangly new Megane RS Trophy-R will cost a frankly troubling £72,140. Now, there are a number of ways to attempt to rationalise or justify this number – the carbon fibre wheels and carbon-ceramic brakes, the clever motorsport-informed aero and fancy Öhlins suspension, the NACA duct and of course the Nürburgring record. Its Sabelt bucket seats only weigh 16kg; the Brembo brakes have discs bigger than your head. But seventy-two grand? Is that not something of an insult to the very idea of the hot hatch? This entire genre has always been firmly rooted in the concept of everyman thrills, allowing blue-collar boys and girls to dice with the sports car swankers in their souped-up shopping hatchbacks. Start putting sports car price tags on hot hatches and the whole concept is exponentially diluted. It changes the essence of what these cars are.

Let’s be honest, the most significant factor in that extraordinary price is surely the exclusivity. Renault are only building 500 of these things, and more than a few will undoubtedly be snapped up by collectors rather than actually used as intended. So we’d like to suggest an alternative. If you have £72,140 burning a hole in your pocket (and if so, lucky you…) and you’re hankering for the sort of hair-raising driving thrills that only a hot Renault can provide, we reckon that money would be better spent not on one car that you’d probably be frightened to risk damaging, but on a whole SEVEN usable Renaults that would put a smile on your face every day. Go on, you know it makes sense.

Megane R26 R

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

You’ll be needing this one, for starters. The spiritual forefather of the new RS Trophy-R, this lightweight track terror took the already incredible base of the extravagantly named Renaultsport Megane 230 F1 Team R26, and turned everything up to eleven. This was essentially the Porsche 911 GT3 of hot hatches, the fireball R26 having 271lbs shorn from its kerb weight, involving the removal of all the sound deadening, the rear seats, foglamps, headlamp washers, passenger airbag, rear wiper, stereo… the rear windows were replaced with polycarbonate facsimiles that flexed endearingly when you poked them, the bonnet was carbon fibre, the exhaust was titanium. Continuing the racer-for-the-road theme, a substantial rollcage was bolted in, finished in a lurid red, joined by carbon-shelled Sabelt racing buckets with six-point harnesses. This super-obscure pared-back variant, of which only 230 were supplied to the UK market, is a bona fide modern classic. The example we’ve found in our classifieds weighs in at a meaty £27,995, which sounds like a lot for a ten year old Megane. But it’s an absolute bargain for a road-legal race car.

Clio V6

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

Another exercise in lunacy here, the V6 Clio is just so Renaultsport. You see, the basic Mk2 Clio was a hugely sensible car; compact yet spacious, economical and reliable, inexpensive and cheap to run – everything a hatchback should be. The V6 Clio turned all that on its head. There’s nothing sensible whatsoever about this car. Nothing. The engine’s where the back seats should be, the boot’s under the bonnet and is just large enough to fit a toothbrush and a pair of pants, the damn thing drinks like a fish, and it will try to kill you at any given opportunity. These cars are driven by very brave people. The engine originated from the Laguna and was tweaked to produce 227bhp; given that converting a small front-engined front-wheel-drive car to a mid-engined rear-wheel-drive one involves rather a lot of extra technological gubbins, the V6 model weighed some 300kg more than the less insane Clio 172, and for this reason it wasn’t significantly faster than its simpler sibling, shaving a mere half-a-second off the 0-62mph time. That’s not really the purpose of the exercise though; the V6 was never supposed to be the quickest hot hatch in the world. It’s just a screw-you car. Renault wanted to build the only mid-engined hatchback in the world, so they did. It really is that simple.

Only 1,513 of these Swedish-built Phase 1 examples were made before production moved to Dieppe for the Phase 2. This early car we’ve found for you has a superb history and is priced at £19,995.

Clio 172

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

Crikey, we’ve breezed through quite a lot of the budget already, haven’t we? Alright, let’s get ourselves some cheap thrills with this little poppet. It’s not quite as mental as the V6 Clio, but you’ll be spending a lot less money on clean pants and psychiatrists while still having almost as much fun – plus the original Renaultsport Clio 172 is a solid gold legend, everyone knows that. Back in the early-2000s, this thing was roundly praised as one of the sweetest-handling hatchbacks money could buy; the sheer naughtiness of squeezing a 2.0-litre motor into a small shopping car still seemed like a supremely decadent novelty, and the chassis beneath was utterly sublime. When you consider the various successes of the Renaultsport line over the last couple of decades, it can all be traced directly back to the iconic 172. It seems almost obscene that we can still buy these cars so cheaply – the one we’ve found here hasn’t been placed on a pedestal within a toughened glass case like it should be, it’s available to you to drive on the road for a bargainous £2,250. And you can live out some of the RS Trophy-R spec-list mischief by virtue of the fact that this one has a few tasty upgrades – it’s got Cup shocks, Eibach springs, a Powerflow cat-back and RamAir induction. In fact, we kinda regret telling you about this one, we’re desperately scrabbling for a job number so we can snap it up for ourselves…

5 GT Turbo

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

OK, having grown up in the nineties, we quite fancied a GT Turbo Raider – although they appear to be about 50% more expensive than other GT Turbos… but hey, check out this early Phase 1, it’s ace. Not a hint of compromise here, this is a bona fide hot hatch hero. This 1986 model apparently has a genuine 28k miles on the clock, and while it carries a glorious period aesthetic (right down to the stock wheels), it ticks every single box for the Max Power generation: the boost’s been wound right up, it’s got coilovers, lunatic cams, whacking great turbo, and ‘it does take a couple of goes to get it started from cold’. This sort of flakiness is exactly what retro turbocharged Renaults were all about. Back in the good old days, it wouldn’t be a quality seafront cruise without someone turning up in a GT Turbo with insane boost, and everyone placing bets on whether or not it’d start steaming. That glory could be yours for £10,500. We know we want to.

Laguna BTCC rep

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

So you really want a track car with lairy graphics? Is that what drew you to the Megane RS Trophy-R? OK bucko, here’s a thick slice of fried gold for you. Obviously we couldn’t slip a genuine Supertouring-era BTCC car into this list, it’d smash the budget wide open, but how about a BTCC replica? What we’ve got here is a 2000 model-year dCi, and… sorry, yes, it’s not the quickest example, but look at it! It’s wearing the classic Blend 37 livery so you can pretend you’re Jason Plato, plus it’s got the 19” TSW multi-spokes tucked right up into the arches, and the engine’s been remapped for a bit more grunt, and… alright, it’s the slowest car in this list by quite some margin. But you don’t even have to drive it, you’ve got six other cool cars here. Just park the Laguna up and look at it, it’s cool. And it’s a thoroughly reasonable £2,000, so our remaining budget remains largely untroubled.

Laguna Coupe

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

You’re into the Laguna idea now, aren’t you? So here’s one that’ll be a bit plusher on the daily commute. You can call this your sensible car. The late-model Laguna coupe is an impressively obscure thing in this country, sufficiently rare that they elicit genuine double-takes out in the wild. The example we’ve found here has the best engine of the range (or, at least, the most credible when you’re arguing about horsepower in the pub), the petrol 3.5-litre V6 borrowed from the Nissan 350Z – albeit detuned somewhat – and you get a heck of a lot of kit for the money. Your £3,495 buys you 238bhp, heated leather seats, dual-zone climate control, four-wheel steering, and best of all the sort of brilliantly peculiar looks that will immediately mark you out as a connoisseur. Or an oddball. Either way, you can take it as a win.

 

21 Turbo

Renault, Renault Megane, Renault 21, Renault Clio, Clio V6, Renault 21, 21 Turbo, Laguna, BTCC, Renault Laguna, Renault 5

We’ve saved the best for last here. 21 Turbo fans refer to this car as ‘the thinking man’s RS Cosworth’, and that’s basically what it is. While Dagenham’s turbocharged four-door has passed into the pantheon of all-time greats, the 21 Turbo has been woefully overlooked, but the specs are alluring: the 2.0-litre turbo engine serves up a thoroughly pleasing 175bhp, and you also get leather seats, power steering, ABS, alloy wheels, electric windows… this was heady stuff in the late-’80s. There was even the option of all-wheel drive if you bought the Quadra version.

The example we’ve got for you here is a one-owner car, un-restored and reportedly rust-free. OK, it’s in Portugal, but at the reasonable £5,500 selling price you’ve still got £405 left in the overall budget to grab a cheap flight out there and drive it back. And if you see a shiny new Megane RS Trophy-R en route, be sure to give them a smug wave. Yes, they’ve got an incredible car – but you’ve got seven.

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