You'd have thought in a world of crummy electric cars and
rubbish crossovers that the car enthusiast community would
be ecstatic at the announcement of a new Clio RS.
But many aren't.
They're angry because Renault has made big changes to the RS
recipe by adding a turbocharger and ditching the
manual gearbox.
To them, that's like someone fitting breasts in stiletto
heels to Mike Tyson.
So is the new Renault Clio RS EDC better, worse, or just a
different car to its predecessor?
The year 2013 appears to be a year of controversy.
We have two significant arrivals in the sports car
segment at very different price points that are changing
the way that we have to operate and
interact with fast cars.
The first one was revealed earlier this year.
And I'm in it now.
It's the new Clio Renault Sport 200.
This is a car that uses a turbocharger and doesn't have
three pedals and a gear lever.
It's got paddles instead.
I've just spent a day driving in his car.
And my thoughts are jumbled in my head.
So I'm going to try and blurt a few of them out to you now.
First of all, I want to approach this as a
curmudgeonly old sod who doesn't like the fact that the
Clio RS is no longer manual.
It is a shame.
Something has been lost.
You know that.
It just has, because you don't have as much
control over the vehicle.
You're not as busy.
Your left foot gets plumped on the rest here, unless you want
the left-foot break.
And you go ahead and use the paddles.
At some point, though, one has to get over that.
And once I have got over that, I want to shift my point of
reference to being 20-something again.
What a lovely thought--
young, a bit more hair, a bit more attractive, a bit
funnier, a bit less gnarled and jaded.
And at that point, I wonder whether this isn't actually
quite a clever car.
Because if I was that age, I'd be pretty excited by a car
that had 200 horsepower, 177 foot-pound of torque, a
turbocharged motor, and I had paddles to pretend I was like
a racing driver.
And this car does shift gear very, very quickly.
And there's lots of funky stuff going on.
I personally don't care about having buttons to go into RS
drive and stuff like that.
But maybe young people do.
Maybe people like me need to understand that Renault has
broadened the appeal of this car.
And yes, it might alienate some of the hardcore people
that want to have a manual gearbox, and lowered
everything, and an engine that screams out to 8,000 RPM.
But for everyone it loses, maybe it'll gain two new ones
with this car.
It's a gamble, but they might be on to something.
How does it drive?
To me, it drives really very well.
On the road, the car is much more comfortable.
It has the hydraulically valved dampers that add a
progression to the damping, which means that it's much,
much more comfortable.
I mean, maybe 50% better.
A car doesn't have to be all bouncy and jarry and stiff to
actually be controlled and very agile on the road.
And this proves why.
It doesn't have the clever double knuckle suspension
anymore, just a normal strut up front.
But it's got less damping in it.
It feels like less spring rate as well.
And it's very agile.
I'm driving along a straight road now, so I can't
re-demonstrate it to you.
But have a look over my shoulder now when I was on a
windy road.
And you'll see what I mean--
steering, 2.6 turns, electric, yes, quite
light, lacking feel.
But in RS drive, when you press the button to the first
stage, you go into sport mode.
You get heavier steering, and you get better throttle
response, and you get a slightly quicker gear change.
If you press the button again and hold it down, you get race
mode, which takes all the ESP away, genuinely away as well,
as we might be able to show you on the track in a minute.
You get a faster throttle response, and you get an even
faster gear change, I think 150 milliseconds.
So it really does feel like you're wapping
up through the gears.
Paddles are made of aluminium.
They do not feel cheap and tacky.
They feel more expensive than many a prestige German car
that does the same thing.
And after a while, I found myself getting into a rhythm
with this car.
And the test of a hot hatchback is this.
Did I start driving it like a bit of a
bell end after a while?
Yes, I did.
I found myself driving a bit too quickly.
That's what hot hatches do to you.
When they get under your skin, you don't realize it.
You just start pushing a bit.
I always do.
I drive these things quicker than I do any super car,
because they're that type of vehicle.
They're effervescent.
They get under your skin.
So in that respect, I respond to it like I do a hot hatch--
points of disappointment, body in white.
It's not a bad looking car.
But to me, the Clio now should be a bit different to a
standard Clio, a Clio RS.
Or it should be a bit different to a standard Clio.
This one just looks like a normal Clio with some slightly
bigger wheels, and that's about it.
It's not a bad looking car, but it's got no great
excitement.
But then, I've not driven the Fiesta.
To me, it looks pretty ordinary as well.
Throttle response is really quite sharp.
This is effective with that little Nismo 1.6 engine.
Not that much boost on it--
OK, it's got about 18 foot pound of torque more than the
outgoing car.
But that comes in at 1500 RPMs, so it's low.
There's a bit of a mismatch between the torque delivery
and the gear ratios.
But if you keep on it, it's quick.
And it stays in there.
And you do feel like you're in a little racing car-- bah,
bah, bah, up through the gears.
Third gear is quite short.
Fourth gear is quite long.
I don't know why they they've done that.
Must be to do with MPG and some [INAUDIBLE].
But even so, you do feel like you're in
quite a frenetic car.
I like it.
And the extra torque on the road from the turbo motor--
1.6 as opposed to the last 2-liter normally aspirated
makes this quite a bit quicker on the road.
It just drags out of turns, and it goes for it.
177-foot foot pounds of torque-- is that enough?
I think it is.
The car weighs just over 1,200 kilograms wet.
So it's quite a big box.
But it's no heavier than the outgoing car, even though it's
got this dual-clutch gearbox, which is always much heavier
than a manual transmission.
This double-clutch is made by Getrag, and it's a dry clutch.
So obviously, not so much fluid lying around.
That means it's lighter and allegedly means
it can shift faster.
The more I drive this car, the more I like it, the more I
feel on the road.
You know what?
I could live without having a manual gearbox.
I'm having a lot of fun here.
And also, one thing I've done today quite a bit is use--
your gear lever's down here.
Because they've made it the right way round.
So push forward, you go down a gear.
Come back, you go up a gear.
And I found myself doing that to pretend I'm a bit of a kind
of Ragnotti-style driver.
You go down, it blips down, you get a pop on the throttle,
and away you go.
You can only judge it by the way that you
respond to it as a driver.
And I'm enjoying it.
The Clio is a five-door only.
But the rear doors are very cleverly hidden, and rear leg
room is fine, so long as the driver is very short and the
rear passenger is equally tiny.
They've tried hard with the cabin.
And there's plenty of red stitching and general
sportiness.
The seats are a bit under cooked for a
French hot hatch, though.
But you still know you're in something special.
It's even got an RS button.
There's also the option of RS Monitor 2.0--
catchy name, that-- which can time standing starts, show
real time power and torque readouts, and monitors a whole
range of parameters, just like a race data system.
It can even, through the hi-fi speakers, make the Clio sound
like an old Gordini, or even a Nissan GTR, which is a bit
odd, actually.
You can add individual race circuits and use it to get
proper lap time data too, which, incidentally, is where
we're headed now in a Cup chassis version.
This is Guadix Circuit, built and owned by a rather nice
Englishman.
It's an interesting place, very technical, perfect for a
little hot hatchback.
So now we're in the Cup chassis car.
As he tries not to overshoot this rather technical
third-gear bend, Cup chassis means 27% stiffer spring at
the front, 20% stiffer at the back.
But actually overall, the chassis is only 15% stiffer
across both axles.
We're 3 millimeters lower, and we've got the Dunlop Sportmax
tire, because we're on the 18-inch wheel.
OK?
[INAUDIBLE]
on the circuit, then I think it's quite clever.
But long wheel travel and suppleness means it's good
over the bumps.
Back off a bit, it will allow the tail to swing around.
Kiss the brake, and you get a little bit more.
There is some understeer, but then, it's front wheel drive.
What do you expect?
Motor--
strong, but of course being a circuit, you don't really feel
the advantage of that torque, because you get through the
torque band so quickly.
So it does feel a little bit breathless.
It's less exciting on the circuit than
the old motor was.
And it's not screaming out at the top end.
But, of course, the plus side is I've got this really fast
gear change.
And it is.
That's rapid.
And it'll do little pops as well on par throttle.
On the road, I didn't think the car needed a diff at all.
But funnily enough, on the circuit, there are a couple of
places where it would be quite nice to have a locker in it.
Fundamentally, the car wants to understeer, obviously.
You can utilize it on a trailing throttle, and you can
take a bit more out of it as well by
just kissing the brake.
But you've got to be careful.
Because if you kiss that brake too hard, you will end up, I
think, with a big rotation on your hands.
What I'm finding really impressive is the way that it
handles the curves.
I can smack it over these curves.
That's really, really hard.
That's quite long on understeering.
But it's front driven.
Short of having a locker in the car, I don't quite know
how you get rid of that understeer in a
front wheel drive car.
Am I having less fun here because I've not got a manual
gear change?
I've got less to do, I'll give you that.
I have got less to do.
Does that equate to less fun?
I'm not sure that equates to less fun or not.
I still think that I'm enjoying myself.
And I suppose any racing driver's arguement would be
I've got more time to concentrate on my line and
what I'm doing with the car because I'm not messing around
the lever down here.
OK, the hardcore types are going to be a bit disappointed
by this car.
It just doesn't have the same tearaway character
as the old 200 Cup.
But there are many positives.
First, those speed freaks will have a field
day tuning this engine.
It will go to 250 horsepower quite easily, at which point I
suspect it might become something of a cult.
Personally, I love the breadth of ability on the road.
The RS is now a much more usable car.
But I just wish it looked more different to a standard Clio.
And thinking about my time driving it now, I think
they've been quite conservative with the gearbox
mapping on down shifts.
Yes, you can simply hold the paddle, and it'll multiple
down shift.
But there is a slight delay.
Up shifts in race mode are terrific, though.
And remember, when the last Clio 197 was launched, people
had said it had gone soft.
But over time, Renault put plenty of lead in its pencil.
There's space for that to happen again.
But as a road car, I like it as it is.