We know, we know. It’s ridiculous. This elephant’s so big it won’t even fit
in the room. The whole point of a hot hatch is that it delivers something
resembling sports-car pace and entertainment with a whole load of extra
practicality and for a whole load less money. Yet we’re looking at a Renault
that, dressed up in all its finery, is as impractical, unrefined, and, at £72,140,
very nearly as expensive as a basic Cayman GT4.
But we’ve always believed that SCGT points should be awarded irrespec-
tive of price or judgements about value. And anyway, is a hatch that costs
almost as much as a Cayman GT4 any more ridiculous than the McLaren
600LT costing twice as much as one? The immediate question is whether a
car derived from a French family runaround is a bigger hoot here in Wales
than the reborn rear-drive two-seat Supra. Don’t bet against it.
Wearing £12k worth of carbon wheels, £9000 of carbon brakes (oddly,
only the front discs are carbon ceramic; the rears are teeny steels), and with
that massive NACA duct on the carbon bonnet begging for cold air, the
Megane Trophy-R certainly looks the part.
Open the door and you’re met with a ’70s-looking pair of Sabelt buckets
that offer stacks of lateral location but are as easy to climb in and out of
as a rental’s board-flat chair. There are no plastic windows like on the
old R26.R, but this car’s incredible 130kg weight loss over a standard RS is
actually greater. Not least because the back seats are gone, replaced with a
big foam pad and plastic cover that looks like a giant baby changer.
Meanwhile over in the red corner there are plenty of babies crying on
the internet about the £54k Toyota not being a proper Supra. We get it. It’s
basically a repanelled BMW Z4 with a fixed roof. BMW platform, BMW
running gear, BMW switchgear, and – if a very senior BMW chassis boss is
to be believed – BMW chassis tuning too, albeit to Toyota’s requirements.
But without another car maker’s help, Toyota wouldn’t have been able to
make the numbers stack up to build a Supra at all. And it’s not like it teamed
up with SsangYong. Yeah, a ‘DM for collab’ sent Porsche’s way might
have yielded an even sweeter response, but the company who gave us the
M2 Competition isn’t a bad second choice. The Supra’s engine isn’t quite
to M2 spec, but its performance very nearly is. Powered by the 335bhp
3.0-litre single-turbo straight-six from the Z4 M40i, the Supra can hit
62mph in 4.3sec, a solid 1.1sec ahead of the Megane. But if your drag strip
sprouts corners, it’s the Megane that’s going to sprint into the distance.
You’re not even out of second gear in the Renault before you know it’s ⊲Civilised sportscar meets wildhatchbackTOYOTA gr SUPrAr ENAULT MEg ANE T r OPHY- rTHE
O d dc OUPLE
OCTOBER 2019 | cArMAgAZINE.cO.UK 91Sports Car Giant Test 2019B Y cHr IS c H I LTO N