FOREIGN LEGION

RENAULT SPORT’S R26R HOT HATCH IS LEGENDARY, BUT HAS IT BEEN SURPASSED BY ITS SUCCESSORS? WE GATHER THE ULTIMATE VERSION OF EACH MEGANE RS TO FIND OUT

- MATT PRIOR

I HAD ALWAYS imagined the 275 Trophy-R was the high point of the really hot Renault Megane model series. I’m not sure why, but I remembered it as the high watermark. With its coupe-ish appearance and rock-rigid body, it seemed as modern as today’s Megane, but with less than 300 horsepower, it retained the delicacy of old hot hatchbacks.

It’s also the only one I drove at the Nurburgring, the track that has made this series of special Renault Sport Meganes famous, because each of the trio set a new lap record for a front-driven production car. That’s not any guarantee of greatness, of course, but it helped here, and I always felt that the 275 Trophy-R was the standout among a series of standout cars.

Today, though, will tell. We have the three cars in the series together in the same place at the same time. It’s a sequence that started in 2008 with a car called the R26R, or R26.R in Renault-speak of the sort that led to the Kia cee’d becoming the Ceed by the time it had passed via sensible sub-editors.

There had been hot Renaults before the R26R. The most bonkers Clio ever had a V6 installed in its middle – the ‘three-liter Clio’ – and even before that, there were Group B rallyhomologated mid-engined Renault 5 specials. But the R26R had a different kind of competition mind and went about succeeding at it in a different way.