Resolutely aimed at the driving enthusiast, this genuine European hot hatch is among the best of the breed. Now, the bad news …

Price: $68,990
Powertrain: 1.8-litre four-cylinder petrol turbo with 220kW/420Nm, six-speed dual clutch, FWD. 
Vital statistics: 4356mm long, 1428mm high, 2670mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 434 litres, 19-inch wheels.

For: Great engine, gymnast levels of agility.

Against: R-Link weirdness, pricey, driver seat set too high for tall.

 ‘Un brin de folie egaye la vie’. A touch of madness brightens up life.

A favourite French saying could’ve, should’ve been a great slogan for the Renault Megane RS. But too late now.

Because? Well, madness. In May Renault announced it has officially dissolved its famous performance division and retired the Renault Sport moniker.

This is not fully the end; really the start of a new beginning.  

Though the road equip that has, since 1984, created France’s last genuine hot hatch and its parent’s coolest car has been sent to the guillotine, Renault has maintained commitment to thrills and speed.

Only the braaping little brats like the top shelf Trophy I’ve just been driving are consigned to history. The future is, unsurprisingly, an all-electric reboot.

Three cars set to be out and buzzing by 2025 will be battery-wed blitzers, presented as Alpines, which will reinterpret as a performance EV brand.

How closely related any will be to Renault’s impending and more mainstream-minded Megane E-Tech Electric is anyone’s guess at the moment. The latter is based on the Renault-Nissan Group’s CMF-EV platform, which is shared with the Nissan Ariya SUV. Like its chassis sibling, the Megane E-Tech will have a 60kWh battery pack and a 160kW electric motor to provide a maximum range of up to 450km.

As sensible and as potentially sensational (because, you know, epic 0-100kmh is an electric speciality) as that sounds … well, it was still a moment of great sadness having to acknowledge that, on conclusion of this test, I might also be saying a final adieu to a brilliant recipe.

One advantage of getting older is that I’ve been lucky to have experienced a swag of RS Meganes over the years. Talk about crazy times.

 Some have been more crackpot and sizzling than others – you know you’re getting into something special when it comes out of the factory with a rollcage, helmet nets and so dedicated to lightness the back seat has been left in France.

 But I cannot recall any that left me cold. If anything, several of the nutsiest ones left me shivering with excitement and, oui, perhaps a touch of relief after a hot outing.

If the version here today is truly going to be the last of the petrol-fed breed, then it’s not a bad way to.

Outside of the limited-count special cars, the Trophy models have always been the least tamed of the freely available off-the-shelf types. Here you achieve the hottest engine, the sportiest chassis, the stickiest tyres and the best brakes.

Plus the most interesting exhaust note; flick into it either the ‘Sport’ or ‘Race’ mode – that it has both is another reflection of how seriously RS takes it duty – and not only will you hear about it, but will your neighbours. And, on especially quiet morning’s, their neighbours as well.

It’s the most-wanted edition and, for New Zealand, also the one that has taken an extraordinary long time to get here. The variant that released here in May went into production in 2018. You could well wonder how much longer it will remain available. It’s the kind of question that is received with a Gallic shrug.

Renault has suggested the car’s production won’t end quite yet, though it’s not being particularly clear about how much longer the assembly line will keep operating. All we know is that it what we get now will never have a successor in petrol form and that, some point in the potentially near future, the ordering department will presumably begin to ignore incoming calls and emails …

Even if it’s here for a short time, it’s definitely here for a good time. And the delay at least means we achieve a version with update features introduced for 2021.

These include new LED headlights, altered upholstery hues, a new 9-inch portrait touchscreen and a 10-inch ‘virtual cockpit’ style digital binnacle. The Bose audio is improved and it has the latest version of Renault’s ‘Easy Link’ infotainment interface.

The RS is also a pretty special-looking car, too. It gets wider wheelarches (overall width is up by 60mm) than the regular Megane, dark-finished alloy wheels, a deep front bumper with a Formula-One-style blade with ‘Trophy’ etched into it, a big diffuser under the back bumper (which, all the bumpf assures, is aerodynamically functional) and some deep slashes for extra air vents in the flanks (ditto).

While Renault has resisted temptation to fit huge, gaudy spoilers, there are some lurid paint options, not least the eye-watering metallic orange of our test car. Yes, it’s divisive – I have friends who, though total performance geeks, would likely choose hues that are a touch more soothing on the retinas than Tonic Orange – but, to me, it’s exactly the right colour to showcase the car’s muscularity.

Speaking off. The big pull is, of course, the engine. It’s essentially the same turbocharged 1.8-litre petrol unit that goes into regular Meganes, but output is upped considertably, to 220kW/420Nm when you opt for the EDC dual-clutch, paddle or stick-shifted model, that carries a $3000 premium over the alternate six-speed manual, which makes do with 20Nm less.

The powerplant is essentially the same as that used in another RS special that never quite got here as a distributor product (though private imports are around), the Alpine A110 sports car.

 While the cars were not quite developed side-by-side, it’s been made clear there was a certain amount of engineering crossover between them. In turn, both can claim valid association with the make’s Formula One effort. Renault says that the F1 engine team, based near Paris, had a hand in redesigning the cylinder head, to make it both more efficient and more powerful.

On paper, the maximum power output suggests the Megane RS would have to cede to super-hot-hatch like the Honda Civic Type R (another now exiting the market). True enough, it doesn't at first feel as immediately feral as Japan’s origami attack machine. Don’t get me wrong. With a new turbo with ceramic ball bearings that boost its responses, plus a freeer-flowing exhaust with a mechanical valve that boosts gas flow even further, it’s certainly very enlivening, but perhaps without the sheer savagery that its sumo rival delivers. 

Don’t give up. It very much begins to show off great talent when start finding some ‘proper’ roads. The fine way in which the car dedicates itself to slicing up corners and making short work of straights in a reminder that, rather than simply create a machine that looks foremost to acing step-off fury, RS has dedicated itself to deliver a broader finesse.

There is some expectation that the driver needs to also intensity their engagement. Primarily, flicking the Drive selector into the hard-out performance modes – and, in that respect, Race is okay for the road, at least in dry conditions, as the car has great grip – and gearbox out of its auto mode are perquisite.

When left to its own devices, the box feels a bit dim-witted. Using it as a manual, ripple-firing up and down the gears with the paddles behind the wheel, is a signal to the car that you’re a serious player.  

It feels more vigorous and sounds it too; each up-change unleashes an entertaining burp – downchanges a fiendish crackle – from the central-exit exhaust and, more to the point, it keeps you connecting with the richest torque curve.

Sense that it has lots to give yet is also not holding a huge amount in reserve abets comment from Renault's engineers that outright power was never the point.

They wanted to create a car that was both useable every day and yet could also present above-average agility and entertainment. Obviously, the intent was to make it feel great on home turf; that it delivers just as competently in the farthest-flung market, in road conditions quite different to their own (look, in vain, for a French translation for ‘coarse chip), speaks mightily to their talent.

In as much as the car’s pace delivers to expectation, it’s fair to suggest that the other reason why the windier the road becomes, the faster and faster the Megane RS feels, is down to it having a brilliant chassis.

RS having steered clear of electronic control for the suspension dampers, which is all too often the German way, is to be applauded. Instead the French have gone to new hydraulic bump stops, which progressively increase the bump absorption rates. This allows the car to be relatively softly sprung while retaining excellent control and roll stiffness; basically, rather than being a stiffly-sprung skateboard, it flows and breathes with the surface, and when ruts and bumps are encountered, it holds a relatively steady line.

Other high points of engagement? The steering is beautifully weighted and, though it might sound like an over-egging, the RS having rear-wheel steering (4Control in Renault-speak) is worthy. That turns the rear wheels the opposite way to the front ones below 60kmh, effectively shortening the wheelbase and making the Megane more agile. At higher speeds, it turns the wheels in the same direction, adding stability.

Brembo brakes are always gold star items and they’re biting into seriously-sized front brake discs.

The cabin is, essentially, that of a standard Megane but with significant sporty add-ons; most notably the fat leather-and-Alcantara steering wheel and the Recaro seats, but also carbon-effect on the door cards.

There’s a head-up display, projected onto a small plastic monocle screen ahead of the driver and the upright, portrait-style eight-inch R-Link screen in the centre of the dashboard will run Apple Car Play now, but isn’t the easiest to navigate. Haptic feedback from the screen would be an improvement.

While the technical element is strong, it’s not by any means an affluent-feeling car. In saying that, the quality of the build and materials is good enough for the type.

Practicality is also a strong point. Sure, the beefy front chairs do eat a bit into rear legroom and, with a roofline like this, you cannot expect to offer brilliant headroom for the tall, but it certainly suffices. Boot capacity is decent at 384 litres, rising to 1247 if you drop the rear bench.

I do lament the three-door coupe body having been replaced by a five-door, if only in the sense that the former just looked all the more ‘right’ for the role. On the other hand, if it’s more than you involved in the buying decision, a five-door is a much easier car to argue for something that can comfortably (well, sort of) carry a family and their luggage, too.

There’s much about this car that makes it the kind of vehicle you’d like to snap up and put away; that goes for any RS, of course, but probable ‘last of type’ status could enhance its desirability. Let’s just hope that buyers in that frame of mind don’t make it a garage queen – it’s too good for that.

Inasmuch as goodbyes go, it’s not of course just to France’s finest. Hot hatches – a category anything packing a tailgate of some kind fits into, even when the body stylings otherwise diverge – have been in our blood for 40 years now, but none seem here to stay in the banging and burbling format we’ve got to know so well.

Stricter emissions standards are already increasingly putting pressure on car makers to reduce their average CO2 emissions across their fleet of models or face hefty financial penalties; which puts pressure on low-volume but high CO2 producing cars like hot hatches.

That’s why Ford cancelled plans for the next-generation Focus RS, why Peugeot, which has a long and illustrious hot hatch legacy, has reportedly added electric impetus into the formula for it next 208 GTi and why Volkswagen, arguably the inventors of the hot hatch with the 1975 Golf GTI, has committed to battery-assisted impetus for all almost all its performance fare.  

If you’re convinced petrol purity is an essential element of this concept, it’s potentially time to act fast. ‘Get ‘em while they’re hot’ is no idle suggestion.