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This car should tell us if any hot Mégane
could ever rival a Golf GTI for roundedness
a
Lane and Davis as
k
Saunders about R
Stests ‘in (^) the old d
ays’
Renault Sport’s Méganes
and Clios were a dominant
force in the car magazines I
read as a teenager. And now that we
road testers are going to run this one
for the next few months, I’m looking
forward to discovering if some of that
magic from years gone by lives on
here. One thing’s for sure: the wider
hot hatch landscape has never been
more competitive, so our Mégane has
some serious impressing to do. SD
SECOND OPINION
We’re pleased our test car sticks with a standard-fit six-speed manual gearbox
Sport^ chassis^ sh
ould^
be better^ than^ a
Cup^
one^ in^ typical
road^ use
2 1 AUGUST 2019 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 65
came along last year, repeating what
some might consider the mistakes
of the last Clio RS. It moved from
a 2.0-litre atmospheric engine to
a more emissions-friendly, less
sweet-revving 1.8-litre turbo and
also became the first hot Mégane
to be offered with a dual-clutch
automatic gearbox (although this
time, Renault Sport didn’t forget
t o i nc lude a m a nu a l a s w e l l). It a l s o
became the first core Renault Sport
product (leaving aside the Twingos
and GTs) to be manufactured away
from Dieppe, at the same Spanish
factory as every other Mégane. The
smart money, with the Alpine sports
car story going so well and probably
needing more and more space at
Dieppe to expand into, would be on
the next Clio RS following suit.
Despite bringing a very tempting
chassis to the hot hatchback
segment with both four-
wheel steering and hydraulic
s u s p e n sion bu mp s t op s , t he
Mégane RS undershot on
expectations in its first few
big tests. It lost to a Honda
Civic Type R in RS 280 Cup
for m i n t he s pr i n g of 2 018
and again to the same car
in RS 300 Trophy form
only a few months ago. In
both tests, however, the
car ran with Renault’s firmer Cup
suspension settings – which, as
Renault Sport chassis engineers were
keen to point out on the 2018 press
launch, really are intended for track
u s e mor e t h a n r oa d m i le s.
Our long-termer, by contrast,
is fitted with the standard Sport
suspension, as part of which the car’s
hydraulic suspension mounts are
tuned to operate quite differently
f r om how t he y do i n t he C up v e r sion.
Plumping for a Sport rather than a
Cup chassis also means you don’t get
a limited-slip differential, of course,
but for a car with a more liveable ride
compromise than the often tetchy,
leaden-footed Cup version, that is a
sacrifice that the Autocar road test
jury is very willing to make.
And so a Mégane RS 280 Sport
i s w h at w e ’ v e got. No sl ipp y d i f f, no
Cup chassis, no Trophy-spec engine
- but a car better placed than any
ot he r, w e hop e , t o t e l l u s w he t he r a
hot Mégane could ever really rival
a Golf GTI for overall roundedness
and daily usability. Renault Sport
clearly likes to think that it can.
However, after just a day and a night
in our car as I write these words, and
having already identified a handful
of things that, I suspect, will become
familiar Renault-brand ergonomic
and usability bugbears before much
longer, it’s fair to say I have a few
doubts. We’ll cover those next time.
I ’ v e a l s o y e t t o h av e my f i r s t r e a l l y
go o d B -r oa d t h r a sh i n t he c a r, I
should add, so the Mégane’s stock has
the potential to both rise and fall –
and quite a long way in both cases. It
should be a revealing few months.
MATT SAUNDERSRENAULT MEGANE RS 280
Price new £27,835 Price as tested £29,435
Options Metallic paint (Flame Red) £650,
Interlagos Black 19in alloy wheels £950
Economy 33.2mpg Faults None
Expenses None
TEST DATA
naturally aspirated hot Clios had so
brilliantly nurtured. And yet, if you
look at how that car’s sales footprint
declined in the UK, it pretty plainly
didn’t manage to.
The current Mégane RS 280