FUNNY, ISN’T IT, HOW HOT HATCHES have got very serious indeed in recent years – to the point where anything with less than 300bhp and an assortment of wings, vents and aerodynamic flicks seems distinctly undernourished.
Given all of that, when looking back at 2008’s Renault Sport Mégane R26.R, you could be forgiven for wondering why those of us who were there still refer to it with such reverence. After all, it musters just 227bhp, which doesn’t even qualify as warm these days for a C-segment hatchback, and then there’s its Nürburgring lap time, the first occasion such a claim had really been applied in a marketing sense to a hot hatchback. Eight minutes and seventeen seconds, you’ll recall; impressive
