The front-wheel drive hot hatch wars have been raging on for decades. Volkswagen owned the scene with the GTI for a good long run, but in recent years it’s been bouncing around between Renault’s Megane, Honda’s Civic Type R, and the venerable German. With the most recent hot FWD Frenchie, the Megane RS Trophy-R, Renault sunk the plunger and dropped a stack of TNT in the middle of what was once a friendly card game. The hot hatch is no longer hot, it’s nuclear.
It’s equally as absurd as the RenaultSport Clio V6 was. It’s also absurdly expensive.
With a new pricing list unveiled last week for the RS Trophy-R, my jaw hit the floor. Renault’s Nurburgring FWD record beast comes in three flavors. The standard RS Trophy-R starts at 51,140 British pounds, or about $62,275 at current exchange. If you want less unsprung weight, you can opt for a set of 19″ Carbon Revolution wheels for an impressive 12,000 pounds, or about $14,595. The wheels add up to a total loss of 17.6 pounds, or $829 per pound lost.
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To properly match up to the Nurburgring record holding car, however, you’ll have to pony up for the Nurburgring Record Pack, which ditches the front fog lamps for brake cooling ducts, and swaps the front cast iron rotors for carbon ceramic stoppers. This package runs another 9,000 pounds. That’s a grand total of 72,140 pounds, or about $87,740.
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While there’s absolutely no chance that we’ll ever see the Megane RS Trophy-R here in the U.S. market, a “lucky” 500 individuals will be given the opportunity to own this wild, and wildly expensive, hot hatch.
You know what? If we’ve moved beyond the ability to call the most advanced sports cars “super” anymore, maybe we’ve moved beyond the ability to call the most advanced hatches “hot” anymore. Welcome to the age of the nuclear hatch. Just be prepared to pay warhead prices.
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