Currently reading: Middle management: Revisiting the Renault Clio V6
If you thought Renault building a bespoke sports coupé was admirably maverick, how about it beefing up its supermini and replacing the rear seats with a V6?

Not many cars possess the capacity to really cheese me off, which is probably a good thing. But the first mid-engined Renault Clio V6, launched 20 years ago, managed exactly that.

It was like finally scoring your dream date, sitting down to dinner in a posh restaurant and then watching them launch into a stout defence of Donald Trump while casually picking their nose. Because of the enormous disparity between how you imagined the encounter might progress and how it actually did, you end up far more disappointed with your evening than had you just stopped off at the local for a swift half with a tedious colleague.

It was all there: an extraordinary appearance and a mid-mounted 3.0-litre V6 developed by TWR, the same bunch of people who had won two of three previous Le Mans races for Jaguar. How could they make a mess of that? Somehow they managed it.

The car was grossly overweight and therefore little quicker in a straight line than the Clio 172 hatch. But the real problem was its handling, or rather its absence thereof. On the limit, it was probably the trickiest new road car I’ve come across, and that includes the Ferrari 348, which would at least let you slide it a bit before making Pininfarina-shaped holes in the nearest hedge. The Clio V6 wouldn’t even allow that. Its approach to corners went grip, grip, grip, grip, gone. And that was that. At the time, I described it as “at its absolute best when parked”.

Whether Renault was surprised by the resulting hail of criticism isn’t remembered, but it certainly moved fast to sort it out. The entire car was, in effect, redesigned in two years, with the result you see before you. The entire suspension set-up alone was all-new, with different springs, dampers and geometry, plus revised kinematics, bespoke tyres and – get this – even a longer wheelbase. The fact that it had a little more power and shorter gearing was really neither here nor there.

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And guess what? This is still not a good car by any conventional definition. It’s still not very fast, the interior is still rubbish, the turning circle remains a joke, the steering feels rather odd and – I had forgotten this – the gearlever is about a foot further forward than you would either expect or desire.

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Except two things are now significantly different. First, I’m looking back at it as a recreational and probably a ‘classic’ car, not with the gimlet eye of the contemporary road tester. Allowances can and indeed should be made. Second, the car may be poor in many and varied respects, but it no longer wants to kill me. I’m not saying it would be above a little light mugging from time to time, were its mood and your disrespectful driving style to warrant it, but you no longer tip it into a corner wondering through which window you’ll be regarding the world by the time the exit arrives – if it arrives at all.

Here’s something else: there’s nothing like no longer being terrified for clearing the mind. If you’re being charged down by a bad-tempered rhinoceros, you don’t tend to take in the view as you flee; similarly, now that I was commanding a rather more compliant Clio, charms that might otherwise have gone if not unnoticed then certainly under-appreciated take centre stage.

You can see for yourself how fabulous it looks, but you’ll have to take my word that it sounds at least as good, too. We have already forgotten what a large-capacity, normally aspirated multi-cylinder engine can feel like when installed in a compact car, but its even flow of torque, wide rev range and rousing growl make it the perfect accompaniment for such a machine. It’s also surprisingly good over a distance, too, thanks to the bizarrely plush ride and impressively muted levels of road noise – provided you can stomach its 22mpg thirst…

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The more I drove it, the more I liked it, even reaching the point where I started to the enjoy its weaknesses. Unlike so many new cars that are today far too keen to say to their drivers, ‘You just sit back and watch the show’, you really have no choice in the Clio but to get stuck in.

Gearchanges need timing if smooth progress is to be retained, while corners need careful planning and accurate execution if you want to keep your trajectory clean and linear – which, even in this Phase 2 car, you really, really do. It is perhaps a strange kind of fun for modern tastes, but it is no less fun for that.

When it departed, it left behind a sense of sadness. No, it’s not a very good car, but it was an extremely charming one, and I enjoyed being in and around it far more than the vast majority of the modern stuff I drive today. What I liked most was the maverick streak that runs through it from front to back. For while the original mid-engined Renault 5 was built to homologate a rally car, there was no such requirement for the Clio V6. It didn’t even have many parts in common with the mid-engined Clio Trophy one-make racer. I have no idea if it was profitable, but even if it was, I would bet that it was only marginally so. And I don’t think for a moment that it was born in the hope that, decades later, it would still be benefiting the brand, thanks to people like me writing wistful words like these in magazines such as this.

Sadly, such cars are only going to become rarer in the ever-more homogenised, electrified world towards which we are moving – which means I’m going to have to think up more excuses to borrow the Clio again. I’ll call it essential medicine – an automotive therapy for those of us who accept that life has to change but still want to be reminded how it once was, or at least could be when a bunch of delightfully potty people got together to create something quite mad for no other reason than because they could.

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Ones we found

2002 Clio V6 Phase 1 (with Phase 2 front) - 16,000 miles, £22,900: Cheap but has history. An accident in 2006 put it on the VCar register, but the vendor says inspections are welcome. It might be a complete bargain or one to avoid. Tread carefully.

2003 Clio V6 Phase 2 - 46,000 miles, £35,000: We like the look of this one, which has had only two owners and been maintained by the same garage for most of its life. Mileage might be a bargaining chip and wouldn’t put us off but also means it’s a car best for driving rather than collecting.

2005 Clio V6 Phase 2 - 7500 miles, £52,000: One of the final 50 right-hand-drive Clio V6s and in effect mothballed of late. Ultra-low mileage is a disincentive to drive it, which seems a shame. But as an investment, you’ll probably struggle to find one better.

Buying used

7 2003 Pahes 2

There’s nothing particularly trick about the Clio’s mildly tuned V6, and both it and the transmission are strong. Ensure maintenance is up to date and that the suspension is properly aligned, as plenty will have swiped kerbs over time. Many have been crashed, too, so look for signs of accident damage and bodged repairs. Correcting these will be neither cheap nor easy. A Cap HPI check is essential.

A clean Phase 2 should be a decent investment. Just over 600 Phase 1 and Phase 2 cars came to the UK, split roughly 40/60 in favour of the latter. Today just 133 remain registered, of which 84 are Phase 2s. So they are rare, and likely only to get rarer over time.

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eseaton 8 March 2021

PS Leave off the politics, Andrew. 

I'm not interested in whether you are a commie or raw meat eater.  

eseaton 8 March 2021

Ah yes.  I can still just about remember the days when Autocar wasn't afraid to say it didn't like the direction of travel in the car industry, or that a crap car was crap.

This is one example.  And their assination of the Mark V Escort, which led to the appointment of Parry Jones and the creation of the Mondeo, was their finest hour.

Now there is nothing - just resignation to the evolution of cars from being things to love and lust after, to white goods.

harf 7 March 2021

Two distinct memories of the Clio V6

1 I was at autocar on work experience and I think we went to Windsor great park to take some photos. I remember revving it especially for some wide eyed little boy.

2 I was at the Nurburgring on a dank and misty May morning. As we joined the queue we saw a Clio V6 at the front, brave I thought, knowing its reputation. I think I was about 3 corners in when I came across the expected spun Clio!