Renault Rips Up The Manual (Part 2)

You give a casual thumbs-up and then the Renault goes. And it keeps going, screaming along the short straights, diving into the corners, its brake lights flashing occasionally, as the exhaust emits a telltale sign that yet another digitally perfected gear change has taken place, until, after no more than 30 seconds, you can no longer see where it has gone. It has disappeared, completely, leaving you and the GT86 with a never-ending armful of opposite lock to deal with, wondering what on earth has happened.

For 10 minutes, you have had a ball in the GT86, reveling in its handling balance and refreshing absence of grip, its zingy boxer engine, its snappily precise manual gear change and its near-telepathic level of steering feel. But there’s also no question that you feel slightly embarrassed, having not been able to keep up - having not been able even to keep the Clio in sight for more than one solitary minute.

So then you swap into the Renault, feeling the clamp of its bucket seat holding you instantly in - position but noting, too, that you are perched several feet higher up, seemingly, than you were in the Toyota. The paddles behind the wheel are metal and have been lifted, they say, straight out of a Nissan GT-R. Rear visibility is poor after the GT86 (which is a surprise) and the dashboard looks sporty but bristling with technology that, again, seems slightly shocking after the simpler design of the GT86’s instruments and console.

Clio has 17s as standard; these are optional 18s

The 17-inch wheels on the GT86 wear 215/45s

The Clio driver can select Normal, Sport and Race modes

The GT86 has an always-on attitude to driver involvement

GT86 has a slick gearshift and rewarding exhaust note

Clio’s gear selector is too big; cabin has a techno feel

You select Sport - this is a hot hatch, after all and register a rise in the idle speed of the modified Nissan Juke Nismo 1.6-litre engine. Alight glows green within the instruments and the words ‘Sport’ and ‘Renault sport’ illuminate, as if to underline the point.

Clunk the gear selector left to select manual and the number ‘1’ appears on the dash, alongside yet another message that says ‘ESC Sport’ (indicating that the e-diff has gone to partial traction control but not yet full-race mode, in which it is tuned to cut under steer by tickling the brakes of the unloaded inside wheel, just as the McLaren MP4-12C does when it senses that doom has appeared on the far horizon).

Another casual thumbs up from behind and this time it’s you who leads the way, you who dictates the pace. Except, from the moment that it moves, the Clio is so much faster, so much grippier and so much more composed than the flailing GT86 that there isn’t really a pace to dictate. After the Toyota, the Clio feels impossibly rapid on roads like these, almost to a point where such a comparison seems mildly inappropriate. But then beside most cars the new Clio 200 would be too nimble, too quick, too hot to deal with, on roads like these.

Inadvertently, we managed to choose pretty much the perfect terrain on which to unlock the Renault’s full potential. Which is why it demolished the GT86 so entirely for unabated speed across the ground. But - and this is where the pain begins and perhaps you should look away if you are one of the 81,500 people who have owned and, presumably, been beguiled by a Renault sport Clio in the past - there is one fairly key ingredient that’s missing this time around. And that’s involvement, the absence of which will either be of little consequence or a major travesty, depending on what sort of driver you are.

To be fair, the Clio doesn’t lack feel or interaction perse. Its steering is impressively precise and increasingly meaty in its responses, depending on which mode you select. The ride is exceptionally comfortable on just about all surfaces, thanks in part to a new hydraulic bump-stop design that enables less aggressive springs and dampers to be fitted. And its combination of a rousing exhaust note and genuinely vivid acceleration makes it more than exciting enough in a straight line.

But at its center, the Clio 200 has become a very different car compared with its predecessors, one whose dual-clutch automatic gearbox in particular is neither fast enough nor intuitive enough in use to justify its presence. To be blunt, it feels much like a regular automatic car with paddles on the move, with downshifts not occurring quickly enough, not even when Race mode is selected.

And that’s indicative of how the whole car now feels overall: much friendlier, much softer, much more usable and civilized every day, but also less intense, less lit up, if and when the right road happens along. The core appeal of the Renault sport Clio has shifted, in other words, and it is bound to appeal to a different kind of customer as a result.

But the people who crave what was on offer in each and every one of its predecessors - that wide- eyed, almost manic involvement when behind the wheel - might be less enthralled by what they find. In which case, they should consider buying a Toyota instead. Because, despite what the mighty Clio RS 200 Turbo can throw at it in terms of dynamic excellence, the GT86 is still the best driver’s car that affordable money can buy.

The Toyota has far less grip but provides greater rewards

The Clio lacks involvement, despite impressive dynamics