FOREIGN LEGION
MOTOR Magazine Australia|April 2020
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
FOREIGN LEGION

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.

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