Renault Clio RS200

Okay, confession time. I have a very big soft spot for hot hatches – especially French ones. There’s no real rational reasoning behind this affection I hold for all things fast, tinny and Gaellic, I just love ‘em.

Cars like the Peugeot 205 GTi (note the small i, it’s important), Citroen AX GT and the Renault 5 GT Turbo are all legends – okay, maybe less so for the AX, but the other two are serious hot hatch icons. In more modern times Peugeot and Citroen have fallen by the wayside with their fast offerings, the last real hot hatch to come from the joint company was the Peugeot 106 GTi/Citroen Saxo VTS, but this still wasn’t quite on a level with the past greats.

Renault however has kept the fire alive with its RenaultSport brand. Back in 1999 the first RenaultSport Clio 172 was released onto the market and in the proceeding decade all manner of fast Clios have made their way onto the roads of Europe.

And now, here in the Middle East, in the year of 2010, the latest iteration of the fast Clio has finally arrived.

It’s the RenaultSport Clio 200, and it’s absolutely fantastic. Now, given what I said in my first paragraph you’d fully expect me to say such a thing, but I promise you, I’m not wearing rose-tinted glasses here. This car has reminded me just how much fun small cars can really be.

What’s most refreshing about the Clio 200 is its honesty. There’s a 2.0-litre engine up front which delivers 200bhp. This is sent to the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox. Anybody looking for a nice-in-traffic DSG dual-clutch or an automatic gearbox might as well give up reading now and go and pick up a copy of Ahlan or something. This is not a car for you.

And anyone whose going to proclaim that ‘the traffic in Dubai is awful, a manual car is impossible to live with’ should go away too. The traffic isn’t that bad, and actually driving a manual car is a simple task that everybody should be able to master without any complaints.

I’ve commuted for three hours each way through central London in everything from highly-strung track cars with clutches that have the tightest of biting points to a Land Rover Defender which requires serious calf muscles just to engage the clutch and I’ve coped. You drive an automatic car because you’re lazy, there’s really no other excuse for it. The only reason my LR2 is an automatic is because Land Rover don’t make it with a manual. Given the choice, I’ll always shift myself.

Anyway, I digress – back to the Clio. Aside from the engine and the gearbox there’s a pair of super-grippy Recaro seats which are absolutely brilliant, some 17-inch Speedline alloy wheels, 4-pot Brembo brakes and that’s about it. There’s uprated air-con to keep you cool which it does a pretty good job of doing. A CD-player features too, though it’s nothing to write home about, but comes with connection points for my iPod so I’m happy.

Other than this, there’s really not much else to report. There’s no pointless keyless entry, no starter button, or automatic climate control. You have to press a button on the key to unlock, twist the key in the barrel to start the car and turn a knob to blue to get cold air. Great stuff.

Colours are limited to red, white and black – pay a bit more and you can have metallic ‘Liquid Yellow’ paint. Wait a few months for delivery and you can spec other colours on special order.

The Clio has been pared back to have the bare essentials. This not only helps keep the weight of the car down – official figures suggest a 1240kg kerbweight. But it also means that the price of this Clio is seriously competitive. The Renault dealership in Dubai is asking just $22,875 for this car. To put that in perspective, a VW Golf GTI starts at $30,520. Sure it’s a bigger car, but it’s no quicker on the road.

With that in mind, here are the specs on the Clio 200. The 1998cc naturally aspirated engine produces a nice round 200bhp at a high 7100rpm, therefore you have to get yourself acquainted with the higher end of the rev range to get the most from the car – more on that later. Maximum torque is just 158lb ft at 5400rpm – there’s no turbo boosting the performance here remember. The dash to 100kph takes 6.9secs and the top speed is 225kph. But a car like this shouldn’t be judged on numbers alone.

As our region isn’t blessed with huge amounts of tight and twisty black top – instead we have swathes of long straight highway – Renault has chosen to keep some sense of comfort on the Clio 200. Therefore you can’t spec the stiffer and lower Cup chassis as you can in Europe.

However, here the ever-so slightly softer setup of the Clio suits works well. With the standard cruise control set, you can comfortably bomb along the motorway, though you really have to crank up the stereo to drown out the 120kph warning sound should you venture past the official speed limit – not that we’d condone such behaviour. But really, driving the Clio is not about the max kph stuff – it’s the getting there that’s the fun.

I took the Clio on my usual blast down to Kalba and around my special loop route back. There the Clio performed extremely well, but it never really felt pushed. With just 200bhp on offer, it doesn’t really make the most of the long sweeping corners. And the exhaust note is not exactly characterful, so the tunnels don’t really provide much fun. No, where the Clio comes into its own is on roads such as the ‘Hatta Squiggle’.

This thin ribbon of tarmac cuts across from the Kalba road back towards Dubai’s remote outpost and is a good test of a car and perfect for something like the Clio. Heavy cars with big power and a rear-drive chassis don’t really like this stretch of road, but the Clio laps it up. It digs deep into the tarmac and shows itself to have oddles of grip.

You might be surprised to hear that I kept the electronics switched on too. But RenaultSport has worked hard to ensure it only comes into play when you’re really being silly and to be honest, I only knew it was doing its job because of the flashing light on the dash. It doesn’t spoil the fun.

With the limited power and manual gearbox, the Clio makes you work for your thrills – but drive it with the right mindset and you’ll be rewarded in spades. This is not a car to sit back, relax and cruise around. Nope, you’ll be thrasing the engine towards the red line, changing up when the subtle but rather useful buzzer tells you to and relishing in the abilities on offer by the snappy brakes and chassis.

Driving a car like the Clio takes me back to blasting around country lanes in the UK, enjoying the limited performance on offer but having a whale of a time doing so. I’m in no doubt the Clio would be absolutely cracking out on the track – though any long straights might be a little tiresome – but in my mind taking the Clio to a trackday is doing it a disservice. I’d much rather get up early and tackle the quiet roads in the back and beyond of the UAE.

With some BBC podcasts playing through the stereo I could almost be back in the UK. Sure the steering wheel being on the wrong side and the 40C+ temperature might break the spell, but I’d be having too much fun to notice. Is the Clio RS the best bang for your buck? It sure is.