![]() ![]() The Renault 5 Turbo 2 Will Ruin Your Social Life Perhaps that’s why we found ourselves getting in touch with Renault’s press office ahead of a recent visit to France, itching for a chance to drive the latest Mégane RS, a modern French interpretation of the hot hatch that has excited the members of the European Fourth Estate through two previous iterations (though it’s actually part of the lineup of the fourth generation Mégane, first introduced in 1996.) With Renault’s commitment to total electrification – witness the new E-Tech Mégane, an electric soft-road SUV twinned with corporate brethren Nissan’s Ariya - what might be new, vital and French about the RS? ![]() Which, it ought to go without saying to readers of a magazine not called Road & Auto-Pilot, makes us sad. But how long can that be? With the recent cancellation of Hyundai’s Veloster N plus the increasing tendency of carmakers to offer (and customers to buy) high-riding cars, including electric ones, weighing as much as quad cab duallies, the hot hatch and its nimble ways increasingly seem destined for history’s scrapheap. Here in America, while Ford, GM and copious others have already bailed unceremoniously on the segment, we still have Volkswagen’s GTI and Golf R plus the Mazda 3 flying the flag, long may they live. Concurrently, it seems like we’re also nearing that lights out moment for something else we’ve long adored, the automotive genus known as the hot hatch. For all indications are we may be living through the end times for the internal combustion engine, a thing we’ve known and loved all our lives. ![]() We’re well into the 21 st Century, yet things lately have a sort of eerie, end-of-the-century feel. ![]()
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