The other RenaultSport Twingo post prompted me to do a mini-update/review after owning mine for 6 months.
Spec: RS 250 with Cup Chassis and leather Recaro seats, 19" Alloys, Fixed sunroof, high-vis pack.
Pics (regurgitated):
Driving (normal): Suspension is possibly a little too harsh for UK roads, but it's wonderfully dampened. 29-32mpg on average which is a mix of town and two-lane A-road driving (A12/A127/A13 if anyone cares).
Driving (fun): Engine is a bit disappointing, having tested the Focus RS and the Golf GTI R, I was left a bit underwhelmed. It runs out of puff way too soon 6,500rpm you get beeped at to change up. However... It pulls away very nicely, no discernible turbo lag and... oh wow, how it sticks to the road and goes around corners! I *have* to get to a track to see how good it really is. This is why I bought it, the other two have a lot of ground to make up chassis and suspension-wise. As I said to the Ford dealer, if they made a car with the chassis of the RS 250 and the 2.5T engine in the Focus RS, I'd have that. But as it is...I went with the car which is simply better day to day to drive. The Focus and the GTI R were just a bit too much hard work to drive...
Practicality: big enough boot for my shopping needs, fits 3 kids in the back, sorted.
Image/Styling: Always loved what Renault do style-wise since the original mégane coupé (which, again I bought from new in 1996 and only passed on last year). Bit dubious of the stick-on plastic bumpers, but as some utter twit-box scraped a bumper on a stick on bit, I was glad of the cheap repair bill.
Interior/quality: Amazing. Just amazing. No more cheap plastics, it's mid-range plastics all the way! Just one grumble is that you can't actually see the speedo needle in most sorts of ambient light, so you can't see how fast you are going. I sometimes wish I'd bought the RS Monitor or SatNav, but the inbuilt satnav is unutterably awful and the RS Monitor would be used once and then forgotten about.
Overall: Expensive to buy, considering what you could get in the second hand market for the wrong side of £25k, but I wouldn't swap it for anything. Reliability yet to be tested, I've only covered 3,000 miles in six months. Still haven't seen more than 2 other RS 250s on the road. Only problem is people mistaking it for a Scirocco or worse still an Astra VXR. As mid-life crisissessese-es go (I'm 39 this year), it could have been worse I guess...
Spec: RS 250 with Cup Chassis and leather Recaro seats, 19" Alloys, Fixed sunroof, high-vis pack.
Pics (regurgitated):
Driving (normal): Suspension is possibly a little too harsh for UK roads, but it's wonderfully dampened. 29-32mpg on average which is a mix of town and two-lane A-road driving (A12/A127/A13 if anyone cares).
Driving (fun): Engine is a bit disappointing, having tested the Focus RS and the Golf GTI R, I was left a bit underwhelmed. It runs out of puff way too soon 6,500rpm you get beeped at to change up. However... It pulls away very nicely, no discernible turbo lag and... oh wow, how it sticks to the road and goes around corners! I *have* to get to a track to see how good it really is. This is why I bought it, the other two have a lot of ground to make up chassis and suspension-wise. As I said to the Ford dealer, if they made a car with the chassis of the RS 250 and the 2.5T engine in the Focus RS, I'd have that. But as it is...I went with the car which is simply better day to day to drive. The Focus and the GTI R were just a bit too much hard work to drive...
Practicality: big enough boot for my shopping needs, fits 3 kids in the back, sorted.
Image/Styling: Always loved what Renault do style-wise since the original mégane coupé (which, again I bought from new in 1996 and only passed on last year). Bit dubious of the stick-on plastic bumpers, but as some utter twit-box scraped a bumper on a stick on bit, I was glad of the cheap repair bill.
Interior/quality: Amazing. Just amazing. No more cheap plastics, it's mid-range plastics all the way! Just one grumble is that you can't actually see the speedo needle in most sorts of ambient light, so you can't see how fast you are going. I sometimes wish I'd bought the RS Monitor or SatNav, but the inbuilt satnav is unutterably awful and the RS Monitor would be used once and then forgotten about.
Overall: Expensive to buy, considering what you could get in the second hand market for the wrong side of £25k, but I wouldn't swap it for anything. Reliability yet to be tested, I've only covered 3,000 miles in six months. Still haven't seen more than 2 other RS 250s on the road. Only problem is people mistaking it for a Scirocco or worse still an Astra VXR. As mid-life crisissessese-es go (I'm 39 this year), it could have been worse I guess...
