CNBC Business | A Rough Diamond

A Rough Diamond

It may be unpolished, but the Renault Mégane R26.R is a gem. Richard Lofthouse reports

By calling in his inauguration speech for sacrifice and maturity after the long enjoyment of ‘childish things’, Barack Obama must have meant the Renault Mégane R26.R. If you buy one you’ll sacrifice almost every comfort associated with a modern motor car. First off, forget about glazed windows — the side and rear windows are apparently made from the sort of plastic that normally goes into Coke bottles. You can kiss goodbye to rear seats and trunk space, which are both replaced by bright red scaffolding, otherwise known as a roll cage, as well as the spare tyre, radio, and soundproofing. With such creature comforts missing, its no surprise that seatbelts and a suspension, in the normal sense of the words, are also absent. 

Set off in this car at low speed on a city street, assuming you’ve managed to squeeze yourself into the narrow, deeply sculpted carbon fibre racing seats, and the first impression is of a coarse, belt-and-braces car fit for any recession, and then some. Hit the starter having inserted the electric ‘key’ (one of the incongruous vestiges of the normal Mégane) and the four-cylinder engine fires up without too much drama, although unmistakably with a gruffer voice than the regular car. Pull away, and the first thing you notice is the short throw gear box, which is very fast and precise. Next, you’re aware of enormously hard spring and damper settings than make the car transmit every crease in the road like an electric shock. Then, as you climb out of first gear you notice two things, first the whine of a slip differential, almost as if a wheel bearing’s gone (this disappears at higher speeds) and simultaneously a tinkling sound as tiny bits of salt or gravel ping brightly off the wheel arches having been picked up by the sticky, semi-slick tyres.  

By now it ought to be clear that this isn’t a car for shopping trips and multistorey car parks, not least because the ultra-light, ultra-fragile anthracite alloy wheels are always within a hair’s breadth of kerb damage. If you want a shopping trolley, the entry level Mégane will take care of that for half the price — and there’s a brand new model just out, minus the enormous backside of the current one, so you can blend in with the VW Golfs and Opel Astras. That’s a proposition as far away from the R26.R as Mars is from Uranus. 

What we have here instead is one of the most interesting points in a production car’s life, when it’s in the process of being eclipsed by a new model. By then, the manufacturers have rolled out so many successive tweaks and facelifts that there’s nothing to do but blow caution to the winds and hurl out one last, stupendous effort that tilts against posterity’s forgetfulness.  

That’s what the R26.R is. It’s a moonshot car: one that will be made in ridiculously tiny numbers (450 worldwide to be precise) but which, in the fullness of time, will gloriously outlive the rest of the breed, wreathed in a smoke of hearsay and legend.  

That much is virtually guaranteed by two things: first, the R26.R holds the front-wheel-drive record for the shortest lap time at Germany’s infamous Nürburgring, just eight minutes 17 seconds; second, it has already been feted by sections of the motoring press as one of the greatest hot hatchbacks of all time.  

In the real world, this means that you have to endure monstrous amounts of deprivation for a thin, unworldly slice of motoring nirvana where the car comes into its own on a open road. Either that or, conceding its real function, you’ll buy a Nissan Navarra and a trailer to haul the car to the racing track. 

The day we tested this car, it was so cold that the flimsy doors had frozen shut while the windscreen had a layer of ice on the inside. Some part of the body shell was creaking at the back, and with the nearly slick tyres it felt like madness to take it on the public road at all. Later the same day, with the ice melted by winter sun, we located a wonderfully safe, open road in the wilds of Wiltshire (England’s Massif Central, you could say), and let it go. 

Straight away, this car makes sense. Under a full throttle, the lightened shell arrows ahead while an extraordinary sound develops, as if the car is sucking air through clenched teeth. Rough roads don’t faze it one bit, the dampers brutally killing any tyre lift, while grooved disc braking is equally massive. Chuck the car into a bend and pile the power on, and there is inevitably some torque steer, the front wheels struggling to steer and drive simultaneously. Yet the car remains wonderfully settled, any understeer neutralised by the slip differential. Lithe and alive, the car squirms but goes. It makes drivers feel heroic when they’re not, the car acting progressively on the limit, aided of course by an Electronic Stability Programme that can, of course, be turned off. 

Whatever Obama was referring to in that speech, maturity is not part of the R26.R’s makeup. White body work adorned with tacky red decals and a non-matching, black carbon fibre bonnet, this car looks like an extra from The Fast and the Furious.  

On the other hand, part of the perverse appeal of this car is that it’s not a supercar. The entire point of the French car industry, historically and today, is that it doesn’t do supercars but it does succeed at Formula One. In between is the socialist solution to the supercar, otherwise known as the hothatch. This was a skill that kicked off rather spectacularly with the Renault 5 GT turbo back in the mid-1980s and continued with successive stripped-down, go-faster Citroens, Peugeots and Renaults. 

The average bystander will either write this car off as a tuner-special, or completely ignore it, leaving the driver to secretly cherish the knowledge that, on a real-world road, he’ll be as fast as a Lambo.  

For the same reasons Renault knows why it could only build 450 editions of this car. Although stripped down to 1220kg, the same weight as the smaller Renaultsport Clio 197 Cup, the truth is that the Mégane is hopelessly ugly and feels far too large on narrow lanes where a hothatch should excel. It is a wide, tall car and in bridal white its “infamous hatch ‘rear’ design emphasised by the highly successful ‘Shakin’ that Ass’ UK ad campaign” (to quote from the press kit) is even more infamous. Definitely go for racing blue instead. White might be the today’s hip colour, but it’ll soon go out of fashion again.  

Arguably, the truer hothatch experience is to be had with the Clio or Renault’s new Renaultsport Twingo 133 Cup. They’re all made in the same, special Renaultsport factory in Dieppe, Normandy, and they all have the same DNA revolving around a brilliant understanding of chassis design and handling. Alternatively, go karting for a day and pocket the change.

Eco-warriors new franco-Italian war 

Not satisfied with being king of the hothatch, Renault has declared its ambition to win the crown for producing the lowest CO2-emitting vehicle fleet in Europe. To dislodge current winners Fiat from pole position, however, will be no easy task. The Italian company is riding high on a raft of environmentally friendly announcements. It was confirmed last month as CO2 winner for the second year running with a fleet average of 133.7 g/km, down from 137.3 g/km in 2007. The French occupy the next three places with Peugeot second (138.1g/km), Citroen third (142.4 g/km), and Renault fourth (142.7 g/km). 

Fiat has already implemented Stop-Start technology on its hugely popular Fiat 500, which will lower emissions still further. Even more importantly, it recently announced a major breakthrough in engine design called MultiAir, claimed to reduce CO2 emissions by as much as a quarter while increasing power. No silver bullet, instead the technology results from a thorough examination of valve control, air mass and exhaust gas recirculation typical of turbocharged engines, including both petrol and diesel units. Fiat said that the first car to benefit from the new technology later this year will be the 1.4 litre Alfa MiTo. 

Renault’s strategy is different. Although it recently announced a new generation of downsized, turbo-charged petrol engines based on cubic capacity of 0.9–1.2 litres, it’s ace card appears to lie in its alliance with Nissan, via which it has access to battery technology through Nissan’s joint venture with Japanese electronics giant NEC. That should allow it to win Europe’s race to the first, credible, fully electric drivetrain, which could in turn slash emissions by 2011.