12 French hot hatch legends for less than Peugeot’s new GTI

This week has heralded the arrival of a brand-new French hot hatch. TopGear.com has driven the shiny new Peugeot E-208 GTI, a car which you can read all about right here. That ‘E’ does a lot of heavy lifting – this is a fully electric French hot hatch, designating it as rather different to the reams of high-revving legends that crossed the Channel here in the decades before it.

Legends like the 205 GTI that Peugeot has paid homage to in the bulk of the E-208 GTI’s marketing bumf and across its interior and exterior design. The EV’s 40-year-old forebear can now command big money used – inevitably – but the same engine and an arguably even sweeter chassis balance also finagled their way into the three-box 309, the lesser-spotted GTI which now looks a wiser buy at just £14,995 (albeit with the steering wheel on the wrong side). Tempted?

Or you can spend half as much on a more modern – and harder cored – Peugeot hot hatch. The first iteration of 208 GTI remains a deliciously underrated thing. In stock form it rode with a certain suppleness to stride gracefully into the boisterous hot hatch mob. With a 197bhp 1.6-litre turbo engine it’s quick, too. Prices start under £3,000.

But it’s the gnarlier ‘by Peugeot Sport’ edition we have here: tougher suspension, naughtier camber and an aggressive front differential are complemented by extra visual muscle and big, coddling sports seats. Not as easy to live with, then, but a whole lot more memorable. Especially at just £6,995.

The joy of Stellantis (merely PSA back then) means more cars got to enjoy the components that made the 208 GTI by Peugeot Sport so cool. The Citroen DS3 Racing got there first, in fact, combining the same 200ish horsepower engine and knurled-fist dynamics with the more à la mode DS3 design.

An inescapably French rival to the Mini Works, it was a fun thing; it couldn’t better its hot hatch contemporaries but made a decent fist at putting its own spin on their recipe. This one comes in its signature black ‘n’ orange colourway for a few hundred quid less than that Peugeot.
 

An all-new Peugeot GTI is an exciting thing to behold, whatever it’s propelled by. But we’d forgive you, dear reader, for being a bit reticent about electric cars and their somewhat shaky reputation when it comes to retaining your cash.

This Alpine A290 has (thus far) held onto most of its value, however, priced just a few grand below its original list price with a year of ownership and 8,000 miles to its name. It’s the top spec, 217bhp GTS in Alpine’s luscious trademark blue, too, itself a pricey option when new. Better than the E-208 GTI? We’ll have to get them together to properly decide…

A290 look familiar? This is its mighty ancestor, the original Renault 5 Turbo bedecked in Alpine trim (we got the 5 in Gordini form in the UK). It’s light and lithe enough for its LHD status to simply not matter, however, not least when its dominant glasshouse gifts you the sort of old-fashioned visibility that doesn’t need a bazillion parking cameras to excuse.

The ‘proper’, mid-engined, rally-proven 5 Turbo is now a significant amount of money – beside it this sub-£15k front-engined, front-driven alternative feels like a true bargain.

Peugeot could do lightweight motorsport specials too, of course. The Rallye badge – and its glorious red, blue ‘n’ yellow decal scheme – has popped up numerous times in history, extreme-diet editions of the 205, 106 and 306 frequently sold alongside plusher GTIs as the true enthusiast’s alternative. It feels unlikely the E-208 will enjoy such treatment (we’d welcome any EV shifting a few pounds, however) so instead indulge yourself in this late Eighties 205.

Priced at smidge under £10,000, it’s a long way from OEM in its spec, but it’s been carefully restored and comes pre-fitted with an FIA-spec rollcage and lowered Bilstein suspension, just to really lean into its hardcore billing. Need any more convincing? Chris Harris is a big fan… 

If you can stomach a rollcage, though, you need one of these. If the hot hatch MO is to be your everyday companion, swallowing up shopping or passengers with ease while slapping a smile on your face when you’re alone, the Megane R26.R fails spectacularly. Should only the last facet matter, though, there’s no purer front-wheel-drive car on this planet.

A 2.0-litre turbo four sends relatively modest power through the front wheels – but it matters not in a car this bare (the rear seats have gone and the back windows are plastic) with such divine balance. This car kickstarted the Nürburgring hot hatch record war, but it did so with suppler suspension than its R26 base, busting the myth that the Nordschleife ruins your ride quality.

Selling a two-seat Megane during a financial crisis proved to burdensome for Renault, who couldn’t shift the UK’s full allocation. Which makes ‘em rare now. Thus, £30k for this Nimbus Grey example feels like a giveaway. Five grand less than the E-208 GTI before its government grant, too…

The Citroen who’s a what now? Yep, you need to be fully versed in engine codes and diff ratios to know the ZX Volcane. This was Citroen’s take on the 309 GTI further up this page, sharing its 1.9-litre engine in this pre-facelift guise while sporting a curvier, more contemporary design. A clever ‘passive rear steer’ setup helped edge it nicely into corners too.

It’s a bit of a sleeper, then, and with some true racing kudos: its ZX Rallye Raid cousin won the Paris-Dakar Rally an astonishing four times. No wonder it’s ten grand.
 

Its diddier AX sibling had already established itself as an offbeat alternative to the GTI establishment, however. The 1.4-litre four-cylinder engine squeezed into the AX GT offered a meagre 85bhp, yet with a bag of shopping over 700kg to propel, it proved more than enough. Citroen was so committed to lightweighting it used three bolts on each wheel rather than four.

Its modest stats set the stall for a car you’ll drive like you’re 17 again, the GT’s meagre power allowing to you rev it past 6,000rpm at nearly every opportunity to stir its wheel-at-each-corner chassis into life. If you can stomach a trip to France to pick up, this storm in an espresso cup costs a whisker over £6,000.
 

The Renault Sport Clio was a piece of the hot hatch furniture from the early Nineties launch of the Williams right until the moment Alpine nabbed the model’s Dieppe factory to build the A110. There have been some mesmeric highs across its career, but it’s perhaps a humble base 182 – shorn of its expensive Trophy designation – that’s your best shot at guilt-free fun now.

Find one that’s not been biffed and you can have about as much fun as it’s (legally) possible to have on four wheels for well under five grand. Mighty on road, these really come into their giant-killing own on a Great British trackday.

Those of us of a certain age will remember heated-up Saxos being everywhere. There were plenty of decent hot hatches in the Nineties, but many carmakers lost faith when soaring thefts led to even more stratospheric insurance premiums. The youthful, enthusiast buyers these cars so faithfully served were priced out the market. Enter Citroen and its clearly fabulous negotiating skills.

Quite how its finance bods finagled free insurance deals on the feisty Saxo VTR and VTS – often with low age limits – we’ll never know. But their shrewdness reignited the hot hatch market and leveraged a car of absurd speed and agility for its humble price and specs. Just watch that rear end on a wet day; wonder how many claims those oh-so-generous insurers had to pay out?

It’s the biggest and plushest car on this list, yet it weighs almost 200 kilos less than the Peugeot E-208 GTI while claiming a near identical peak output. Not a single car on this list is here for its straight-line performance, though, and this Mk3 RS Megane is perhaps the most thrilling of them all in the bends.

Drive a modern Civic Type R alongside it and you’ll conclude Honda bought one of these and simply demanded their engineers “do this”. But when the FL5 still commands £40k (or more), a seven grand Megane 275 appears the very definition of a bargain.