Hot hatch shootout: 10 contenders become six in track battle

Ten make it to Scotland unscathed on a Sunday night. OK, that’s not quite true. Nine make it, of which two aren’t firing on all cylinders. Not literally. It’s more that their windscreens aren’t at full transparency. Losses for both the BMW M135i and Megane RenaultSport Trophy in the drag finals at Bruntingthorpe saw them chew on their respective winner’s dust. Which turned out to contain more than dust. Decent cracks afflict them both, but thankfully haven’t developed any further.

Meanwhile, Bruntingthorpe’s victor, Audi’s RS3, is nursing a puncture, and so sits forlornly outside Tom Ford’s house, some 300 miles south, awaiting a new tyre. With a following wind, it should reach Knockhill by lunch. All in all, this is about par for the course for a TopGear test.

Read the rest of TG’s quest to find the best hot hatch on sale in the UK:

Twenty become ten – Drag Racing at Bruntingthorpe

Six become three – Elimination Drive in the Highlands

Three becomes one – The Final Trio at the Applecross Pass

I’m pleased to report that I had a very uneventful drive up here in the Seat Leon Cupra wagon. It claimed to have done 35.8mpg, and put me in mind of a junior Audi RS4.

It’s not only massively capable, but always has a little bit extra in reserve for those moments when you think, say, at 10pm on a Sunday night, that the A702 and other roads that seemed to twist playfully across the pages of your road atlas would be a much better way to arrive in Livingstone than the M74/M8. Shame that Seat either wilfully rejects VW’s infotainment system or has the inferior stuff foisted on it.

Now, where was I? Ah yes, Knockhill, 8am Monday morning. They were racing British Superbikes around here yesterday, and the celebrations must have been lengthy. It’s like the aftermath of Glastonbury: campsite stragglers, muttering truckies, a confetti of litter gusting about on the breeze.

Our cars look perfectly at home as they coast down into the pitlane. There’s no side to hot hatches – they look boisterous and confident, ready for a bit of knockabout fun. They josh with each other, a gang of mates, no hierarchy – although I suspect all are secretly glad the RS3 isn’t here yet. That one is a bit more serious-minded about speed, and is odds-on to do the double and win against the clock here, too.

Winning against the clock isn’t the key thing. Even though we have touring car legend and local hero Gordon Shedden on hand to do the timed laps, we’re not going to take the five fastest through to our final adventure on the magnificent Applecross Pass. We’re going to take the best.

And, as will become clear, that’s a very different thing. Not necessarily five, either, just those we think are most deserving.

The stretch of tarmac that will help us sort the good eggs from the bad apples is only 1.3 miles long and boasts a mere nine corners. So that’s just nine points that each contender needs to master to earn a place in the final.

Sounds simple enough, but when the first of them is among the most senior I’ve come across at any racetrack, the scale of the challenge becomes apparent. It’s a fast, blind-entry corner that immediately falls off a cliff and notches straight into a good kink left that you absolutely have to get right if you’re going to avoid crashing into a Scotsman. Sorry, just Scotsman – it’s Turn Three. That first corner is called Duffus Dip. A strong contender for best corner name ever.

I settle on the Fiesta ST as a good starting point. Nothing comes at you too fast in the Fiesta. This is not a reflection of its lack of speed, but on its astonishing chassis composure. Some cars here have motors that dominate, but the best blend engine potency and handling seamlessly together. The Fiesta is one of those. It flows beautifully and has a lightness of touch that genuinely sets it apart from almost everything else. It’s friendly and well balanced, eager to please with a cocked wheel at the hairpin or a whiff of lift-off through Clark’s.

It can’t put up with sustained abuse – it’s not one of those that keeps coming back for more, but it’s so engaging and communicative that you’re happy to play to its strengths and major on momentum, saving speed instead of trying to steal it back with late braking. The Fiesta gives you time and moves with you. It’s a proper scamperer. The perfect starter hot hatch. And therefore, as far as the littlies go (by which I mean the 208/Clio/S1), the yardstick by which all will be judged.

I choose to make that judgement call immediately by switching to the 208. Things don’t start well. You slot your backside in over the promisingly tall seat bolster and it collapses under you. There’s no structure in it at all. It wilts under pressure.

You can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? Yes, it’s a metaphor for the whole car. I remember the 208 30th feeling alert and sharp on the road, but something seems to have been lost in the translation of that limited-edition version becoming a full part of the model range. The diff doesn’t dig in properly at the hairpin, it feels like all its responses are as muffled as the exhaust. It’s grunty in a straight line alright, nice spread of torque, but the touchpoints are spongy and the steering wheel is munchkin-sized.

Mind you, in the Clio it’s too large. That’s not my biggest issue with the Renault, though: every time I get in, I’m once again staggered to see an automatic gearbox lever. Can’t help it. Just doesn’t belong. And it’s a five-door only. This may be the newly toughened-up Trophy version, but it’s clear that Renault’s compteurs de haricots still hold sway.

That said, its newly stiffened and lowered suspension gives it a delicious chassis, genuinely wonderful. It dances and scoots around Knockhill with faster footwork than the Fiesta and more vigour, too. It’s Scrappy-Doo, a little charger, it drags you in, resisting understeer and working its front diff hard.

And then you have to change gear, and the magic is gone. The gearbox is better now, but it still doesn’t belong in this car, it still doesn’t suit it. A little bundle of energy like this needs a punchy manual shift – the Megane has one, so why not the Clio? It’s frustrating, because although I don’t think this Clio quite has the magic of the 2005 182 Trophy or the same edge as the last-generation 200 Trophy, it’s not bad at all.

But in the pitlane the Clio is divisive. I like it. Everyone else disagrees. We expected more, especially from something wearing the Trophy badge, and the weight of expectation can be a sod.

You never expect much from an Audi, do you? We’ve driven and reviewed the Audi S1 many times before, yet its capacity to entertain still came as a surprise. It’s a hot Audi, it’ll be four-square and sensible, goes the common thinking. But this one is different. It’s a full-on comic, which starts when you set out to investigate on which corner it will inevitably understeer and ends nine corners later when it’s proved to have the pointiest nose of anything here and a propensity for oversteer that initially seems alarming.

It’s a tight little nugget of a thing, tough as a ball bearing and forever acting like it’s in a pinball machine.

It turns quickly thanks to that short wheelbase, and if it pivots too much, all you have to do is get on the power and allow the turbo/quattro combo to sort out your mistakes. It’s a hoot, a giggle and beautifully made, too. It doesn’t have the chassis sophistication of the Clio or the Fiesta, but it’s long on perkiness and personality, and that’ll take it far. Mighty midget.

Maxi-midget arrives as we break for lunch. Tom Ford reports that the RS3 now has the correct tyres and that we can stop with the jokes because, yes, they are on the correct axles, with 255s at the front and narrower 235s out back. We head off to discuss understeer and classic five-cylinder engines over bacon baguettes and baked potatoes.

We come back to discover that Audi’s S department builds a better hot hatch than its RS division. Considerably better. The RS3 is a bludgeon. Yes, it does ultimately turn in the fastest lap time, but it does so in a joyless way. It’s effective, yet utterly inert. In fact, I’m surprised that it is that fast, given that its brakes aren’t great, turn-in is lacking and you drive everywhere with 10 degrees more steering lock applied than you’d expect. Yep, understeer ahoy. And no way of neutralising it, either.

There are upsides – it rides a lot better than the old one, and body control is better than the BMW, but you inevitably start to pair these cars off against each other, to work out that they do things in similar ways. The Fiesta, 208 and Clio group together, likewise the Megane and Civic, and, here, the RS3 and Golf R. And the VW makes the £10k more expensive Audi feel blunt and unrewarding.

Let’s get one thing straight: the Golf R is tremendous. This is how a 4WD hot hatch should feel and respond. It doesn’t need the ridiculous start-up pops or two-tone alloys, it just needs to deliver on the driving front. And this one really does.

Like the Fiesta, engine and chassis are so harmonious, and then, when you dig deeper, you discover handling that’s far more multidimensional than you imagined. It’s at the sophisticated end of things, rather than the outright hardcore of the Civic and Megane, but it’ll happily go toe-to-toe with them.

That said, I adore the Megane at Knockhill – it’s my favourite: stellar brakes, sharp, visceral front end and genuinely challenging if you want it to be. Superb steering, and a chassis that feeds you so much information, and feeds it to you so clearly and concisely, you never feel out of your depth. I quickly built a rapport with the Megane – it took longer to arrive when in the Civic.

The Civic is an angry car, properly cheesed off. It has a point to prove, the point being that it’s the fastest. Were this a flying lap test and not skewed by the Audi’s 4WD standing-start ability, victory would have been the Honda’s. It’s basically a competition car and felt ultra-sharp at Knockhill – the gearshift is mega, the seats the best here, the diff the most active. For sheer driving kicks it’s unbeatable, but the disappointment for me is that it’s not as nicely balanced as the Megane, doesn’t have the same adjustability. It’s a small thing, though, and after it, all others seem tame, pedestrian.

In this instance, that means the Seat Leon Cupra estate. I know, it’s about the tamest car here anyway. But you know what? It takes to the track like a duck to water. Try one, and I guarantee you’ll be as surprised as I was. Despite traction issues out of the hairpin, it’s smooth and composed with a sparky edge.

Seat’s estate runs the BMW M135i far closer as a track weapon than any of us expected. Maybe even surpasses it. The BMW may be rear-wheel drive, but it doesn’t have the body control and steering feel to exploit that supposed benefit. Despite having a mighty engine, it comes across as a GT car rather than a hot hatch, and doesn’t have the naughty, sharp edge that makes the Golf so convincing.

End of playtime. Shedden, fresh from lap-time duty, is sharing his opinions. There are cars here he doesn’t like very much. The Clio’s “random gear ratios” are slated, the BMW is accused of “behaving like the QE2”, and it’s clear the 208 and RS3 haven’t fulfilled his expectations either.

“I’m going to give you a top three. You’re going to have the Golf, Civic and Audi S1. Or maybe the Megane.”

He’s right, you know. We’re going to have all of those, plus the Fiesta and the Leon. Britain’s six best hot hatches. It’s time for the final reckoning…

Read the rest of TG’s quest to find the best hot hatch on sale in the UK:

Twenty become ten – Drag Racing at Bruntingthorpe

Six become three – Elimination Drive in the Highlands

Three becomes one – The Final Trio at the Applecross Pass