LIGHT BRIGADE
YES, YES OKAY. LET’S get the price out of the way first. There is a $11,000 difference between these two, which is a fair slug of cash by any measure. But more than any other hot hatch pairing in the world today, these are kindred spirits. Both the new $63,900 Mini John Cooper Works GP and the $74,990 Renault Megane RS Trophy-R have binned their back seats to save weight, waved goodbye to ride comfort with ruthlessly focused suspension set-ups, and somehow squeezed 220kW+ through their front wheels only. They’ve also squeezed their production run down to a limited series, in the Megane’s case to 500 cars worldwide (and just 20 for Australia) and a less exclusive 3000 for the Mini (65 for this great Southern land). And both are once-in-a-lifecycle cars – this is the third Mini GP in 14 years (officially, it’s called the GP3), and the third fully committed Megane; the first was 2008’s plastic-windowed R26R, the second 2014’s 275 Trophy-R. The Renault holds the Nürburgring Nordschleife lap record for front-wheel-drive production cars at 7min 40.1sec, and the Mini GP3 too has lapped it in under eight minutes. That’s quicker than a BMW M2. So if you want the most hardcore hot hatch on sale today, one that’s closer to a sports car than a shopping car, these are the two hottest in the world right now. Which offers the hardest hit?
THERE’S SOMETHING OF THE CARTOON CHARACTER ABOUT THE GP3
The Mini GP comes out swinging, from the moment its turbo 2.0-litre four-cylinder fires up with a guttural smoker’s cough,
