First Drive Review: Renault Sport Clio 220 Trophy

The cost of the thing alone shows just how expensive cars have become. When that money gets you a Focus ST in the class above, something is amiss.
 
I still want this over the ST or GTi, but only because it has 5 doors and I have two kids. Otherwise this would be tough to pick over the cars with manual gearboxes.
 
VXR
The cost of the thing alone shows just how expensive cars have become. When that money gets you a Focus ST in the class above, something is amiss.
Click to expand...
The Focus ST is unusually cheap in that class though.

Also it's terrible.

Also, a statement like that fails to take inflation into account. I've got a 1993 copy of Autocar sitting on my desk, and in the back of it, the first-gen Clio 16v (pre-Williams, but still a damn good car) was £12,565. That's about £23,500 in 2016 money (the calculator I used doesn't yet have 2017 on it) - or only a couple of grand less than this up-specced Clio. A regular Clio 200 is £20,295 at the moment, which is significantly less than an inflation-adjusted Clio 16v.

It's much the same story for any other car. A Golf GTI was £15,096 in the same 1993 issue, which works out as £28,200 today. A 2017 Golf GTI is £27,550.

The only real difference now is that in the UK, average "real wages" are lower than they were ten or twenty years ago, so while cars are no more expensive than they've ever been, they've become more difficult, relative to income, to afford.
 
Can't agree more on the gearbox.
When I rented a 200 at the Nurburgring a few years ago I was bitterly disappointed with it.
The gear changes were just so slow and you felt disconnected from the car.
And like you said the engine just doesn't have the sort of repose time you would expect when you hit the throttle either.
It felt so slow and disengaged compared to my 2004 Mazda MX-5 SE(aka Mazdaspeed Miata) which I run on track in Australia.
I give this gen Clio a big thumbs down. Hopefully they bring the manual back for the next gen car.
A few years earlier I drove a Suzuki Swift Sport around the ring, which was actually much more fun to drive and it did what you wanted it to.
 
homeforsummer
The Focus ST is unusually cheap in that class though.

Also it's terrible.

Also, a statement like that fails to take inflation into account. I've got a 1993 copy of Autocar sitting on my desk, and in the back of it, the first-gen Clio 16v (pre-Williams, but still a damn good car) was £12,565. That's about £23,500 in 2016 money (the calculator I used doesn't yet have 2017 on it) - or only a couple of grand less than this up-specced Clio. A regular Clio 200 is £20,295 at the moment, which is significantly less than an inflation-adjusted Clio 16v.

It's much the same story for any other car. A Golf GTI was £15,096 in the same 1993 issue, which works out as £28,200 today. A 2017 Golf GTI is £27,550.

The only real difference now is that in the UK, average "real wages" are lower than they were ten or twenty years ago, so while cars are no more expensive than they've ever been, they've become more difficult, relative to income, to afford.
Click to expand...

I think I'm just having a hard time coming to terms with the days when almost everything below the Premium Germans cost less than £20k no longer exist. Like my engine tastes, I'm stuck in 2003 haha.
 

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