Renault Clio RS 182 Trophy vs Clio RS 220

A decade isn’t all that separates these two Clios. Going by name alone, one is inarguably a direct descendant of the other, and yet what we have here is an automatic five-door with a turbocharged four, and a naturally aspirated three-door with a manual gearbox. Such is progress, then, that on first inspection these two diminutive Frenchies share little.

Photography: Rowan Horncastle

This feature was originally published in issue 284 of Top Gear magazine.

The Clio II first. Renault sold thousands upon thousands, but few like this. Built to wave goodbye to that era of Clio, the 182 Trophy was always meant for us Brits, and just us. A run of 500 was planned, but somehow the Swiss managed to convince Renault to build an extra 50 left-hookers for them. The French didn’t get any.

Based on the Clio Cup of the day, all Trophys came in Capsicum Red, with a spoiler borrowed from the Clio V6 and a set of Speedline alloys for a weight-saving of a worthy 1.3kg per corner. Inside you got Recaros mounted 10mm lower – but still about a foot too high, a steering wheel so vast it could command a Nimitzclass aircraft carrier, and a special, numbered plaque. Obviously. This particular car is number one, tidy as you like, and worth the princely sum of £15,500 when new. Big money for a Clio.

It was the Sachs Race Engineering dampers – which have remote reservoirs for better, erm, damping – that really made the 182 Trophy. Without getting too beardy about it, such equipment has a separate reservoir that holds a proportion of the oil and gas required by the main damper, freeing up space for a thicker, stiffer damper rod. They were massively expensive – Renault reckons 10 times the price of a regular damper – and distinctly rare groove. This is proper motorsport stuff, and they make the 182 quite unlike any other hot hatch of the day. Properly excellent, is what.

That list of £15,500 way back in 2005 is a little under £21,000 in today’s money, or about £800 less than the latest flappy-paddled 220, which proved quite irksome when it was first released as the boggo 200 in 2013. All told it was a decent enough car, with a fundamentally good chassis, but the twin-clutch gearbox began to annoy from the moment you set off. Shift times were quickened and power was upped for the 220, and everything was stiffened up as per the Trophy norm, but something’s still missing. That auto gearbox will never belong, no matter what Renault does to it, and while it’s properly quick around a track (it’ll pull the same peak g as an AWD RS3. We tested), the magic is somewhat lacking.

The 220 is not big, but the old car feels tiny by comparison. By modern standards it’s far from quick, but the 2.0-litre four really gets going after about 5,000rpm. The steering telegraphs more or less exactly what’s going on underneath you, the chassis is playful yet stable (it’ll cock a wheel if you try hard enough) and there’s more grip than you’d ever need. The new car, meanwhile, delivers on the speed front, but stops short of offering the kind of thrills as, say, the Fiesta ST, let alone the old car, or the superb Clio III RS that slots between these two.

The most irritating thing about the Clio RenaultSport 220 is not the gearbox. It’s that the RenaultSport Megane, which isn’t that much more, can be had with a manual and, crucially, is much better. More involving. If only there was a way to transplant some of that into the little ’un, and revive some of that old Clio magic…