Clio Renault Sport (RS)

The RS is not simply a gussied-up version of the Dynamique. It?s a hot hatch that has the performance to back up its looks.

It?s shape is reminiscent of Renault?s professional rally and track cars, with wide wheel arches, a front splitter and air extractors just behind the wheel wells. A twin, large-bore exhaust is blended into the rear diffuser.

A bar of black plastic replaces the grille and is perhaps the definitive design feature for the RS.

The cabin is suitably kitted out, with bucket seats, chunkier steering wheel and a gear-shift that clearly states the fact that there?s a six-speed transmission coupled to the engine. The rev counter is boldly marked with a yellow background and has a gearshift indicator that blinks and beeps as red line is reached.

Short shift

The first three gears up the chain have all been shortened for nippier acceleration but the changes are vague and the transmission does not take well to quick shifts, which I feel spoils the effect of having a hot hatch in the first place.

This is a minor blemish on the performance of the RS and it was remarkable to feel the car treat the sleeting rain and soaked tar as if the water was not there.

Our drive took us up Bains Kloof pass ? and back down again after a brief stop at the Bains Trading Post ? and the RS could not be shaken from the hairpin bends and rutted tar.

What impressed me even more is that when I played passenger on the return journey, not once did I feel the need to reach for a door handle to steady myself. I was completely cradled in the bucket seat while the dual valve damper technology and stiffened suspension did its job.

Weak at the knees

Our total trip time was about four hours and left me aching at the knees. This is how I discovered my bugbear in the RS. The door handles and fascia curves are lower than in most other cars and so ended up digging in the softer flesh between the joints of my knees. That's right, both of them.

I was not the only driver to complain about this and I wonder if there?s now a whole newsroom?s worth of writers walking around bowlegged and gingerly approaching flights of stairs.

On the plus side, its power and performance lulled me into driving a lot more aggressively than I usually would, confident that I would back down before the RS would. The TomTom (a portable unit in this case) was also a great help here. It is preloaded with speed limit and safety camera (read that as speed camera) information and warned me when I was approaching said cameras or a road where it would be safer to reduce speed.

And speedy the Clio RS is. Renault claims a zero to 100km/h sprint of 6.9 sec and a top speed of 225km/h.

Page 3? Dynamique and RS specifications