A colleague – let’s call him Mark – reads a proof of the Renault Mégane RS Trophy-R review with an intake of breath and a question: “Should a hot hatchback really cost £50,000?” 

I see the point. Hot hatchbacks are meant to be sports cars for the masses, cars that bring fun down to a level that those of us with more modest means can enjoy. And enjoy often. 

On this I agree. And the Trophy-R is likely to cost £50,000 when pricing is announced, a number that isn’t notably approachable. At the same time, I don’t have quite as much of a problem it, although my eyebrows, too, might have raised when I was first told. 

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But I’ve since seen the true extent of the changes, I know how long and lovingly the Trophy-R has been developed and, crucially, I know how it makes you feel when you drive it: line up every supercar on sale today and there are quite a lot of them I’d walk past to get into the Renault. 

And I suppose the nub of it is that the Trophy-R doesn’t feel cynically priced. I mean it is still hot and it does still have a hatch rear end. But when writing out what its rivals are for the review, I would have felt no less comfortable writing ‘Porsche 911 GT3’ instead of ‘Honda Civic Type R’, despite the Renault’s outright performance being much closer to the Honda’s than the Porsche’s. 

That’s just the kind of car it is. It’s a rare groove, designed with a niche purpose – hence only 30 will come to the UK – and a car that, I feel, has more in common with, say, a Ford Ranger Raptor or a Polestar 1 than a Ford Fiesta ST or Seat Leon Cupra. I’m not exaggerating when I think the list of best-ever front-drive cars now needs a rethink. Question is: just how high would the new Trophy-R sit? It could even make my top one. 

So maybe don’t think of the Trophy-R as a £50,000 hot hatchback. What was the rear seat space is now meant for strapping track-day tyres into, after all. How much is too much for a hot van?

Driven to distraction 

Perhaps the Trophy-R is in the top one of best front-drive cars? Perhaps. The problem with ‘best ever’ lists,  whether it’s films or books or music or cars, is that quite often they get swept up with the new and lack the context of somebody being there at the time of the older things. I’ve driven a Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk1, but not until it was several decades old. And classic cars rarely feel as fresh as, I suspect, they did when they rolled off the line.