Christmas is a tough time for any car. It will invariably involve dreary slogs along wet and/or salty motorways to visit various relatives (of the owners of the car - not the car itself), inordinately large amounts of luggage, and trundles into an icy, muddy countryside to walk dogs/elderly relatives.
For me, it is also one of the few times of the year when an ordinary three-door supermini-sized hot hatch really isn't enough. I spent the holidays last year in a long-wheelbase Land Rover Defender and that was barely big enough to hold all the Rigby gubbins. Therefore prospect of spending Christmas 2009 with the trusty PH Clio as my sole transport was worrying me somewhat. We already know that it's a fantastic thing to fling around road and track, as our summer track day sojourns in the Renaultsport Clio proved, but how would it cope with the entirely different trials and tribulations of Christmas motoring?
Fortunately our fears proved unfounded. The little Clio emerged from 973 miles of Christmas motoring having required nothing more than a litre of oil (after a little more than 8000 miles overall), a top-up of washer fluid and a gallon of fuel every 28.1 miles.
The first test in the ordeal was luggage capacity. The Renaultsport Clio was packed to the gunwales with a combination of enough luggage for 10 days away, a seemingly incalculable number of presents and, er, five gerbils in three separate cages (don't ask). It was a big ask for the Clio to swallow it all, but it managed it (just).
The next task was tackling almost a thousand miles of snowy, salty and icy motorways, A-roads and country lanes, something that actually threw the Clio slightly.
For a start, our Clio is a ratty old thing to drive before the engine and gearbox have warmed up. An obstructive shift and an inconsistent power delivery make smooth progress amazingly difficult to achieve for the first five minutes of a journey, though weather that's just our example or a more general Clio Renaultsport malady, we couldn't be sure.
Away from town, the lumpy low-speed ride becomes more pliant at higher speeds, and the Clio becomes a much more comfortable car. The optional Recaro seats hold you tight without ever playing too rough, and the handling on twisty B-roads is nothing short of a hoot. It's just a shame that the Christmas ice prevented me from chucking the Clio about with the sort of abandon that it revels in.
It has to be said, though, that the Clio Renaultsport's motorway ability is poor. Despite six ratios to use up, the short gearing still means you're north of 4000rpm on a fast motorway cruise, at which point the whole cabin vibrates (albeit ever so gently). The result is that, after a 200-mile journey on multi-laners, you're left feeling literally a bit shaken about. At motorway speeds the weedy standard-fit stereo struggles to make itself heard, too.
But these are perhaps overly harsh criticisms. We borrowed the softer, slower, more comfort-oriented Clio GT from Renault a little while back and, although you might feel a touch more relaxed and comfortable in town in the GT, you would miss the extra country-road sharpness (and power) that the Renaultsport 200 brings.
Even so, it's hard not to love the Clio, despite its numerous (minor) shortcomings. It's a near-impossible task for any car to be all things, to all men, and in all situations but, considering its Christmas performance, I reckon that the Clio gets closer to being a master of all trades than most. That it does so as a £17k hot hatch is nothing short of incredible.
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