Renault Sport Clio V6

Putting 225bhp into a shopping wagon created a supercar that never stopped tugging on its lead, says Sean O'Grady

(Patrick Sautelet)

What is the maddest thing you can do to a Renault Clio? Why, take the back seats out and shove in a dirty great 3-litre, V6 powerplant, I would suggest. Yes, they really did do that. It's worth remembering, and celebrating.

The Renaultsport Clio V6 has only been out of production for a couple of years, yet I miss it already. Not, perhaps enough to buy one, you understand.

They cost £27,000 new and, given their rarity and collectability and instant classic status, they can't be much less than that now - thirsty and expensive to insure as they may be. They're also quite a handful.

Taking on one of these, I should think, would be like adopting a a particularly troubled rottweiler/pit bull terrier cross: a challenge, a bit of a journey into the unknown and accompanied by an ever-present risk to life and limb.

But like the sicker end of the cross-bred dog trade, there's a certain morbid fascination with the product of those diseased minds. You might not want one, but the question forms in the mind, could you actually handle one if push came to shove?

Fortunately, I had the chance to sample one of the last Clio V6s just before they headed off back to planet mad for good. They'd managed to extract another 25 horsepower for its final fling, up to 255bhp, somewhat in excess of the VW Golf GTi and enough to endow the little Clio with the performance of an Aston Martin or a Porsche.

It was only two years ago, but already my memory of it is suffused with a sort of nostalgia. It ticked all the boxes, as they say. It went incredibly well: packing such a forceful power unit into a shopping car meant you really never had to bother changing gear. True supercars are the ones you can just stick into third and leave them there. The Clio's abundant reserves of torque assured success on that test.

It was frighteningly, brilliantly accelerative: it just never stopped tugging on its lead, anxious to go over the horizon, no matter what might lie beyond it, greed camera, artic, bus, whatever. Crazy mutt.

You'd have to provoke it quite a bit to have it lose control. Full-on cars such as this hottest of Clios look like they're a bit lairy, but usually the chassis engineers have gone to some lengths to keep drivers much more adventurous than the likes of me out of ditches and other trouble. The lowered suspension was again functional - it kept the centre of gravity down, and the engine was ideally placed - in the middle, where the rear passenger seats would normally have been - for perfect balance. So it was usually fairly pliant.

Then there were the looks. Mine was finished in that bright bright yellow that Renault reserves for its most outrageous products and more than eye-catching. It demanded attention, as did the extensive bodykit. When applied by the Max Power bunch to Saxos and Civics and, indeed, Clios, bodykits usually look just awful. Factory-fit ones are usually much better, and the Clio's one had the great advantage of combining form with function.

Plonking the engine in the middle of the car, well out of the way of the grille and other traditional spots for taking in air, meant that those huge scoops on the sides were actually needed, to keep the V6 cool. So it looked cool to stay cool, if you get my drift.

Most special of all, perhaps, was the row it made. The ever-present burble behind your ears made sure you remembered what a privilege it was to be driving such a machine.

So I suppose I managed to learn to love this vicious-looking little terror. But I know its the last of a line stretching past Renault 5 turbos to the old performance-oriented "Gordini" Renault 8s.

Yes, Renault is churning out faster and faster versions of its new Clio and the ever-popular Mégane. It's busying itself with Formula 1, too, to some effect. There's no sign of the company losing its recently rediscovered flair for design, or at least styling.

All good news. Yet every one of Renault's road cars will, for the foreseeable future, have its engine positioned ahead of the driver. You will, in other words, still be able to go shopping in one. And that's not really good enough.