To Cup to Cup? In other words, if you spec your Clio 200 with the ultrastiff Cup chassis or this non - Cup setup? Tricky one.

It is really an important decision, notably since there is currently a better distinction between Cup and non-Cup than about the old Clio 197.

Fortyfive percent will be a lot, and changes the 200's character as a cheeky smattering of amyls. We're considering you, Civic Type R - it remains a firm small bugger that headbutts every hole within the street - as some hatches although the Cup 200 is much less viciously fragile. It feels, actually, similar to the 197, which sat farther to the end of the hot-hatch scale compared to the brand new 200.

The inescapable tradeoff with this additional bubbliness is a minor dearth of precision to the limit. Where it is possible to feather the angle of the Cup by means of a corner with a sensitive prod of the accelerator, the non-Cup is really a marginally blunter device, its slower ratio steering significance you'll generate more with your palms than your finger-tips. It still gives the confidence to you to belt it to the limit, immediately, but after you are there nonetheless, it simply will not give you rather the same amount of surround-sound suggestions.

Talking of sound, the softer chassis setup really appears to dulla small of the revvy rawness of the 200's motor. It is the same naturally-aspirated 2.0litre four-bud revving for the same 8,000rpm, but it seems only a bit more civilised, a bit more dull.

Renault expects to offer somewhat more non-Cups than Cups, and - if really, really pushed - it is the softer setup I had choose for if I need to drive my Clio daily about the sort of streets we get in britain, trading in these last microns of sense for the advantage of not grimacing in expectation of that next huge pothole.

If you are torn between them both, here's the remedy. Possibly towards the conclusion of Scotland and back. Really, why bring 'em back?*

Renault Clio RRS : On Road and Track