Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

Can the Trophy-R really be worth more than double the price of the standard RS300 Trophy? We unleashed both on track to find out
Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

£70k or so buys you a lot of track car these days. For that, you could get your pick of the Caterham line-up, an Ariel Atom, a Vuhl 05, perhaps a Porsche Cayman GT4. Or a Renault hatchback.

Yes, in its fanciest form with the optional carbonfibre wheels and front carbon-ceramic brakes specced, the Renaultsport Megane Trophy-R really will set you back £72,140. If you were sipping tea while reading that last sentence and managed to avoid spitting it all over your screen, well done you. The previous Trophy-R - the 275 - wasn’t exactly cheap, but the price between this and the standard Trophy is especially huge this time around.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

This is a worry as if you strip away the spendy carbon trinkets, you’re left with something which doesn’t seem like it’s going to be all that different, save for the wallet-imploding price. You don’t get any more power, nor do you get a radically altered chassis. Had Renault gone batshit and made something similar to the old V6 Clios, I might have understood giving this car a five-figure price tag that starts with a seven. Over in the states, Honda will sell you a fully-fledged Civic Type R TC racing car for around that much, for Pete’s sake.

A car cannot be judged by what’s on paper alone, of course, so that’s why both the Trophy and the Trophy-R are sitting in front of me, slowly warming up and waiting to prove their worth. We need a baseline, so it’s the Liquid Yellow RS300 Trophy I head for first.

Conditions at Curborough Sprint Course today are best described as… shit, frankly. It’s cold, dark and wet. Not something that would usually faze a hot hatch too much, and yet the Trophy is making a meal out of transmitting its 296bhp output to the tarmac.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

A combination of a grabby mechanical limited-slip differential and a muscular mid-range means the front end is all over the place. And on my way around each corner, the all-wheel steering is adding an unwelcome feeling of unpredictability to proceedings.

A few laps in, however, and I’m gelling with the Trophy. With a more considerate right foot and a greater sense of what the ‘4Control’ rear-steer system is trying to achieve, I’m getting quicker and starting to enjoy myself.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

The all-wheel mega hatches of the world may be dicking around with obscene 400bhp outputs now, but there’s a real joy to driving a more engaging front-driven car with circa 300bhp. More than enough power to seem quick, but not enough to feel excessive on the road nor this tight handling course. As the icing on the cake, the pedals are damn near perfectly spaced for heel-and-toe fun.

Switching to the Arctic White, stickered-up Trophy-R (the decals are optional, but you just would, wouldn’t you?) my expectations aren’t lofty. Can it really be that different?

The answer is a hearty hell yes. It feels as separate from the Trophy as the Trophy feels to the ‘warm’ Megane GT. It’s a completely different ball game, and within a few corners of my out lap, it feels as though I’ve stepped into a lightly watered-down touring car.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

The Trophy, with its standard-fit Cup chassis, is already firm, but the R is firmer still. The stiffer setup introduced by the adjustable Ohlins dampers gives the steering more life, and the front end an even greater sense of pointiness. This is a much more serious car. And a much lighter one - a total of 130kg has been shed, partly thanks to the carbonfibre bonnet, carbon rear diffuser and the fabulously supportive Sabelt seats. As a result, three-tenths have been lopped off the 0-62mph sprint, giving a new figure of 5.4 seconds.

With the Akrapovic titanium exhaust (which chops off another 7kg) growling away behind me and the rear seat delete (-25kg) making the back of the car like an echo chamber, the soundtrack is much more interesting too.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

One of the most crucial changes is one of the things that has been taken away - 4Control. Neither the Megane RS 280 Sport, 280 Cup nor RS 300 have convinced me that the tech is worth having. And my suspicions of it being a gimmick seem to be confirmed by the fact that Renaultsport engineers decided the Trophy-R was better off without it.

Around the Nordschleife - this car was all about breaking the front-wheel drive Nurburgring record, don’t forget - the benefits of rear-steer wouldn’t have been great enough to counteract the weight of the system. With it binned, 32kg is saved.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

The Trophy-R is all the better for the omission of the tech - it’s a much more predictable car now. And it’ll still do plenty at the rear axle; oversteer antics are a well-timed lift away, but such is the aggressive nature of the car, you do need to be ready to respond with opposite lock very, very quickly.

The tyres are the same Renault-bespoke Bridgestone S007 model as the Trophy - unlike the old 275 Trophy R, this one doesn’t have semi-slicks. Perhaps that’s a good thing, because as with the standard Trophy, getting all the power in the wet down remains an issue. If anything, it’s even trickier here due to the firmer attitude at play.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

Making up for this shortcoming is the brake feel. The middle pedal is still a little over-servoed, but there’s so much more feedback coming through. Curborough’s short straight doesn’t give a proper chance to test the full might of the 390mm carbon-ceramic rotors - grasped by four-piston calipers - that’s something to try another day. Even braking from a modest-ish 80mph, though, the Trophy-R is lively - wiggling around as I prepare to start each lap.

Out on the road, the Trophy-R is - much like the standard Trophy - quite unforgiving when it comes to the ride. But as a track special, the firm setup seems more acceptable, and there’s more finesse to the damping. It’s as thrilling off the track as it is on it, with the lower speeds giving a better opportunity to enjoy all that glorious feedback the steering and chassis gives you. It’s a full-on thing wherever you drive it, but the rewards are worth your perseverance.

Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?

Driving these two back to back, you really can see where the extra money has gone. But £72,000 is still a figure that I, and no doubt many others, can’t quite accept. The lure of the alternatives - the ones we have mentioned and the ones we haven’t - is just too strong. Exceptional though the Trophy-R is, it is still a front-wheel drive hatchback. Wouldn’t you want something with a more special starting point, a higher cylinder count and the torque sent to a different axle for that kind of dough? Even in its £51,140 ‘base’ spec, it’s a lot to swallow.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what I or befuddled onlookers think - this is a limited-run special of only 500, and Renault has already found homes for the 30 £72k cars it’s building with both the carbon wheels and brakes. Even considering my reservations about the Trophy-R, I completely understand why.

Comments

Tomislav Celić

This is no longer a hot hatch

It’s a hyperhatch

12/18/2019 - 13:13 |
30 | 0

I like this term

12/18/2019 - 13:29 |
12 | 0
Renaultsport Megane Trophy Vs Trophy-R: Can A Hot Hatch Be Worth £72k?
Malte

It might be worth 72k but it just doesn’t fit the current market. You can get an Alfa Romeo 4c nowadays for almost 55k and that’s a mid-engined Italian beauty which would always be my pick for that money.
The Trophy-R is an impressive car but for that money nobody is gonna put their hands on it. It’s just one of the cars that gets interesting when it’s used and the price drops to 40k.

01/05/2020 - 10:25 |
12 | 0
Olivier (CT's grammar commie)

In reply to by Malte

The price won’t drop to 40k, like ever. Not with a limited distribution, not when the car is that focused, and not when the sticker price is that high.

01/05/2020 - 21:28 |
10 | 0
Olivier (CT's grammar commie)

Honestly, the only way I could have seen Renault being justified to sell a hatch that costs that much would be just like said earlier: if it was something that had little in common with the regular car and that had a lot more power than the original car, like the Clio V6 or the Renault 5 Turbo from the early 1980s. I could understand them asking so much, since the car is almost made again from scratch.

However, for a car that only differs from the less expensive versions by the add-ons (not even new tires) and which doesn’t get more power or a different engine? That’s close to being fraud or something. Again, if it were maybe a racing version or something, I could understand, but it’s not.

If I thought the Focus RS was too expensive, and if I think the asking price for the regular Trophy is ludicrous, then this is just stupid. There isn’t much R&D that went in it, just add-ons that you could probably have bought yourself. It might be good, but not GT-R-priced good.

01/05/2020 - 21:41 |
6 | 0
Elliot.J99

No.
I’d rather buy an A90 and spend £20,000 on mods

01/06/2020 - 00:03 |
2 | 0

An Supra is like £70k right? At least it is in the Netherlands right now, maybe somebody even more.

01/06/2020 - 09:30 |
0 | 0
German Car fanboy

I’d rather buy a Tesla

01/06/2020 - 03:33 |
0 | 10
5:19.55

Would have been easier to justify if they had a tcr race car

01/06/2020 - 05:33 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

why would you buy this when you can spend 10,000 pounds on a 1986 Toyota corolla gts and then spend 60,000 pounds to make it nice. ThIs THinG cAnT EvEn DrIfT!

01/06/2020 - 22:06 |
0 | 0
Anonymous

why would you buy this when you can spend 10,000 pounds on a 1986 Toyota corolla gts and then spend 60,000 pounds to make it nice. ThIs THinG cAnT EvEn DrIfT!

01/06/2020 - 22:06 |
4 | 0
Anonymous

Ngl, this is a very cool car, but I would never spend that much money on a hot hatch from France.

03/11/2020 - 17:07 |
0 | 0

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