The Last Renaultsport Clio Is An Overlooked Bargain From Just £7k

For seemingly no real reason, Renaultsport Clios have been three-wheeling around my head in recent weeks. It’s why I recently did a whole piece reminiscing about the almost-nearly Clio RS16 not too long ago. In that, stating that the last production Clio RS was a “little bit of a disappointment”.

That was very true when the car launched back in 2013. ‘Disappointment’ being relative as it still reviewed well at the time. But it lacked the interaction, that feeling of connection that its forefathers traded on – and most crucially, it was missing a manual gearbox.

Being the first (and ultimately, only) turbocharged Clio RS didn’t help its case either in a lineage of cars that were renowned for being their most rewarding when you had to thrash their naturally aspirated engines. It seemed the Clio RS had gone soft, and it never really became a sought-after car.

Yet, as it often does, time has passed and now the world of the hot hatch is a very different one. There is no new Clio RS and there never will be, and all of its rivals bar the VW Polo GTI are now dead. Crucially, including the Ford Fiesta ST which set an unconquerable benchmark for the last decade.

Old hot hatches are getting expensive, and the very best Renaultsport Clios cost an absolute fortune now. Another journalist friend of mine recently listed his tidy 182 Trophy, possibly the peak of them all excluding the V6, for £13,750. I baulked when he told me that, and even more when I realised that’s pretty much the entry price for one now – expect to pay almost £20k for the best-of-the-best.

With all that in mind, it’s only natural I’ve been scouring the classifieds to see what the last of the Clio RS can offer in 2024. It turns out, a potentially overlooked bargain.

£7,000 can get you a leggy one that isn’t a write-off but go in with a budget of £9,000, and there are plenty of very tantalising early cars, like this 2015 example. It’s Liquid Yellow (the right colour), has a reasonable 52,000 miles on the clock and a mostly clean MOT history bar with one fail for a brake light.

The dealer is offering a 12-month MOT if you buy it too, which is handy as the current one expired four days before publishing this. That suggests it could’ve been sat around on the forecourt for a while, so there’s potentially some haggling room there.

Really, though, the Clio IV you want is a facelift 220 Trophy. This has the more potent 217bhp version of the 1.6-litre turbocharged four-pot, a fruitier-sounding Akrapovic exhaust and lower, stiffer suspension.

You will need to up your budget, naturally. £12,495 will get you this 2017 car with similar mileage to that earlier 200. It’s also a slightly more boring spec outside, but it does still at least have the random red accents scattered across the interior.

Will the Clio IV RS ever reach the status of a legendary hot hatch? At this point, highly unlikely. But I doubt they’re going to get any cheaper than they are now, and as a result, could be your last opportunity to get a well-valued supermini with Renaultsport pedigree.