There’s no better way of understanding just how fast a car is than by experiencing it from behind the wheel. Unfortunately, that’s not always possible, so watching it accelerate in a video will have to make do.
So, this is a clip of the new, 296 HP Renault Megane RS Trophy being subjected to the acceleration test. The French hot hatch, which is a beefed up version of the regular Megane RS, managed to hit 100 km/h (62 mph) in 5.6 seconds in MotorsportMagazine’s test, one-tenth of a second quicker than the carmaker’s official estimate.
The 200 km/h (124 mph) mark was reached in 20.4 seconds, and at the end of the 1,000-meter (0.62 miles) run, the speedometer indicated 221 km/h (137 mph). Flat out, it can do 260 km/h (162 mph), unlike the non-Trophy version of the new Megane RS, whose top speed is only 255 km/h (158 mph).
When it was unveiled last summer, the Megane RS Trophy was thought to be the car that would challenge the Honda Civic Type R’s Nurburgring lap record for front-wheel drive production cars.
Nine months later, the record still holds, but Renaultsport has another ace up its sleeve: the Megane RS Trophy-R. Could this be the model that will finally beat the Type R? The rumored weight reduction and possible output increase over the Megane RS Trophy might just do the trick, though we’ll have to wait until it takes to the ‘Ring to find out.