Supercars were once the undisputed kings of the road, but now the hot hatches are catching up. Are you better off buying a no-holds-barred hare or have they become an indulgence as the tortoises gain turbos to provide fast transport with room and everyday practicality? John Henderson took to the road with a Renault in each category to see if the fable still holds true.
The 5 turbo's interior, above left, feels more roomy than the GTA's which still provides plenty of space for two. Both cars have their engines over the driven wheels: 5 at the front, below left, GTA at the back
Everyone used to be able to pick out the fast cars. They were the low, sleek ones with room for two, but little else. But now it's not so easy, because fast cars come in all shapes and sizes. Now you ignore the little hatchback tortoise at your peril, because it could be just as quick as the low, sleek two-seater hare of a few years ago. Admittedly, the low, sleek cars have been advancing with the times too, and getting indecently fast, but is it worth lashing out on one of these highly specialised performers now that the hot hatches are so good?
If it's driving pleasure, handling and performance you are looking for - a car that can cover the ground quickly - is it worth buying something less than practical when you can have the versatility of a hatchback? It was Renault who gave us the means to find out. La Regie virtually invented the hatchback, and their rip-roaring £7990 5 GT Turbo won our hot hatches contest last year. With its turbocharged 1397cc engine turning out 115bhp and 121lb ft of torque, it lapped Millbrook at 123.3mph and hit 60mph from standstill in just 6.9 seconds, while its roadholding and handling earned almost universal praise. But Renault also do a low, sleek supercar, the £24,960 GTA V6 Turbo, whose boosted 2458cc endows it with 200bhp and 214lb ft of torque. Our fairly new one took the Millbrook bowl at 152.6mph. You can see 60mph in just 6.1 seconds in what the French can call the Alpine V6 Turbo. And it looks the part!
In power to weight terms, the 5 has 30.4 fewer horses to the ton than the GTA's impressive 172.4bhp per ton. But the 5 is still exceptionally quick by hot hatch, if not supercar, standards and while the GTA is one of the less idiotically impractical supercars, it cannot match the 5's practicality. The plan was to cross the country diagonally from Kent to Anglesey, driving the hatchback tortoise and the supercar hare back to back on a variety of roads and asking them to do `normal' tasks, like carrying luggage, parking and getting lost in town - though the last one, we would admit, wasn't really planned.
Setting out in the cheeky little 5, I did only 40 miles of the 600-mile trip before discovering the first person who underestimated its ability. A white Astra GTE on the M25 moved over when he was flashed, but speeded up as the 5 moved up, then he had to dart out in front at the last minute to avoid hitting a lorry - though braking would have been safer. And all this was done without indicators! He was only the first of many to show a total lack of respect for the 5. By the time I got to the M1 Newport Pagnell services rendezvous with photographer Peter Robain I had charitably decided that it was just me being paranoid. Or was it? Peter gave me a head start, but soon after joining the M6 there was a flash of lights from something coming up fast, and there was the GTA. No sooner had he gone past me than the Renault 25 I had been following, with no indication that he intended to move over, slipped into the middle lane without being asked. And yet the GTA had gained on him no more quickly than I had. Even a 123mph Renault 5 commands no more respect than an ordinary 5 called Boring.
At the Corley Services we stopped to swap cars. Peter moved camera equipment and luggage into the 5 in case he found suitable places to lay in wait. In the GTA his baggage had occupied all of the small forward loadspace and the two back seats, but in the 5 it went neatly into the boot. While the GTA has enough space for say, a romantic weekend's luggage, even two people going on holiday would have to fill the rear seats with bags. And don't bother buying a set of suitcases to match it - it's soft bags only in a GTA. In addition, the 5 has a practical hatch back while the GTA owner has to go back into the car to push the lever which latches the front loadcover down - not easy with your hands full of the things you have just taken out.
As soon as you step from the 5 to the GTA you realise you are in another world. The cabin is wider than the 5's but feels closer and more cocooning. The driving position is better for the long legged, as the 5's high seats don't quite go back far enough, while the GTA's seats can actually go back too far. But it is visibility that really changes. It's not just a matter of windows: it is also your height above the road and, when manoeuvring out of the service area carpark, the limited view of the car's nose. Unlike some sports cars, the GTA doesn't have headlamps that pop up to show where the drooped snoot ends.
Back on the road, the GTA takes some getting used to. After the 5 it seems lively and a little unpredictable at first, like an excited horse. With the engine so far back it is sensitive to crosswinds and the 255/45 Pirelli P700 tyres, like all wide tyres tramline. After a while you realise that, as with some excited horses, the jitterings contain no malice or real danger. But it means that it is not as easy to drive the GTA quickly as it is the 5, because you have to read the road more carefully. Neither is it reassuring on elevated motorways when every other road joint deflect it a different way. I soon realised I was not paranoid. Suddenly all the idiots who had pulled out without indicating, or hogged the outside lane, disappeared. We no longer had to treat every car that pulled over as if it would suddenly leap sideways into our path again. People respect the GTA. They seemed to add about 10 mph to its speed in their mirrors. If they failed to notice its aggressively styled wedge shape coming up behind them, they moved over quickly when asked - unless they were in a small van, which seemed to grant them ownership of whatever lane they were in.
With the 5, people did not actually see a fast car. If they pulled out of your way they would think it safe to pull back again if they were baulked by slower traffic, because they did not realise that the 5 was already gaining quickly on them. After all, a 5 Turbo demolishes the 50 to 70mph sprint in just 8.7 seconds in fifth. If the driver has changed down he will be going 20mph faster than the 5Omph you are doing in just 6.4 seconds. Many drivers expect 1100cc performance from all 5s! Fortunately, they expect the GTA to accelerate hard, because it goes as quickly in fifth as the 5 Turbo does in fourth and by the time you get to the 80 to 100mph slot, it almost halves the 5's times.
And then it started raining. Our original plan had been to come off the M54 and go into Telford for some town driving. In fact soon after leaving the A5, I got lost and had to stop to let Peter and helper Ed in the 5 Turbo go in front and navigate. The problem was that the GTA's eccentric handclap wiper system leaves huge unswept areas of screen which combine with the screen pillars and the mirrors filling the quarterlights to give a huge blind spot. So aswe hit roundabouts for the first time, I found that I could not see into them. With the interior mirror restricting vision the other way, it also made it difficult to spot direction signs in time. It is something you learn to live with; you soon get used to looking earlier and looking through the side window itself of near the screen pillar. Following the 5 along its namesake A-road, I found overtaking risky as I tried to peer through the spray of other cars via the unswept screen. The alternative was to pull right out so that you could use the swept section.
We stopped at a pub near Chirk for an unmemorable lunch, after which Peter wanted to go on ahead with the 5 to seek suitable photo locations. But the heavens decided to try harder. I had given him a five-minute start, but I did not see the 5 again until we reached Anglesey. As you head into the Welsh mountains, the little dry slate walls at the roadside are high enough to stop the GTA driver being able to judge bends. You can't see over them to tell where the road goes, every bend is blind. Any devil may care attitude was killed when a fast approach to a brow made blind by the car's height found it coming over the top pointing at a stone wall with the road turning left. Fortunately the GTA handles extremely well, with good roadholding and the minimum of roll, so it generally went where it was asked without drama.
But as the rainclouds obscured the mountains and the roads into Snowdonia got wetter, the wipers' arc gave more problems You looked into right-handed bends and the unswept section gave you a bathroom window view. The low viewpoint also makes it difficult to spot standing water on the road. When the A5 opened up you could feel the car twitch as individual tyres skated across little pools of water, which made you wary of pushing on too quickly just in case a puddle was big enough to lift more than one tyre But it also illustrated how good the road feel was in the GTA. Oh, by any standards the 5 is good, but alongside the GTA its road feel seemed lacking. But suddenly the road became a dual carriageway again and then the bridge over the Menai Straits appeared. You could see nothing of the straits over the parapet, of course, so this concrete bridge's Inca-style towers looked quite spectacular until you got to the other side and saw the suspension bridge towering over the gorge, a pale blue spectre against dark mountains.
It was at the hotel, the Victorian mansion Henllys Hall, where the GTA's crowd pulling power first became apparent. By dinner time most of the friendly staff had noticed it and wanted to know about `the Renault'. We pointed out that we had two, but nobody had noticed the 5. And it was the same the next day. The leading 5 may as well have been invisible, nobody gave it even a first glance, but all heads turned for the GTA. Schoolboys `corr-ed', schoolgirls nudged friends, mums pointed it out to toddlers, young men looked envious and old ones gave it a considered stare. No set of roadworks was without muddy men peering between bollards and calling mates as it passed. And nobody seemed disappointed when they found it was a Renault rather than an exotic Italian or German. The GTA has enough visual ability to stun everyone into drooling admiration regardless of the name on the tail.
The rain had stopped and with a clear windscreen the country roads in the GTA became more fun. You could see into bends and exploit the car more. With the main photography over, we headed back across the bridge and stopped for lunch at a pub which advertised: `You can't smell chips because we don't do them'. I took the 5 over again and it decided to prove that the 5 Turbo's hot start problems have not been solved. It had been temperamental at every stop, but this time it excelled itself. Much churning later, we were off on the return route Ed had suggested, down the A487 to Caernarfon and onto the A4085 for Beddgelert and Penrhyndeuraeth. There you join the A487 to Maentwrog where the A470 and A458 will take you on to Shrewsbury. It is a spectacularly beautiful route through the Welsh mountains and hundreds of green slate villages with names unpronouncable to those born my side of the border.
After the GTA, the 5 felt soft and rolling, though it is really quite a taut and precise little machine. It makes you appreciate the GTA's feel and handling even more. After the GTA the 5 feels less precise and trustworthy, it seems more likely to understeer than it really is. Understeer is its weakness, but in a predictable way and with high limits. As we entered the mountains I soon noticed how Peter in the GTA was braking for brows that I could easily see over, and for bends that I could judge by looking over the walls. In the give and take of motoring on these roads you found that where the road opened up and the bends were uncluttered, the GTA quickly pulled ahead. But once the bends were enclosed by walls and banks, or the road started to undulate and twist, the 5 started gaining.
When it started to rain again, the 5 had a definite edge on visibility, but the GTA seemed to hold its own on handling. The GTA might aquaplane more easily at speed, but it still cornered well in the wet. The 5 in the wet was much more prone to torque steer and lifting a front wheel on corners. You had to be more careful about acceleration on bends and when leaving junctions to stop it spinning a wheel. The GTA is also much more refined than the 5. It proves that fat tyred cars with their engines behind the driver do not need to be loud. But the 5 suffers a very unpleasant vibration at around 3500rpm which could be avoided on the motorway but not while working the gears on the mountain roads. The GTA worked happily with no drawbacks.
PEOPLE RESPECT THE GTA. THEY SEEMED TO ADD 10MPH TO ITS SPEED IN THEIR MIRRORS. IF THEY FAILED TO NOTICE ITS AGGRESSIVELY STYLED WEDGE SHAPE COMING UP BEHIND THEM, THEY MOVED OVER QUICKLY WHEN THEY WERE ASKED.
Before the light got too bad, we decided to do some car to car photography. I briefly swapped back into the GTA and after a few runs noticed a distinct smell of petrol. We had noticed this before, after fill ups, when it appears to be caused by the heavy petrol vapour settling in the luggage well alongside the large, under 'bonnet' filler and then finding its way into the vents as you drive off. But this was more worrying. When we removed the filler cap there was a strong blast of warm petrol vapour from the tank! A later check revealed nothing, and it never happened again. We can only assume that the constant low speed work involved in car-to-car pictures meant that heat was not being dissipated fast enough from behind the front mounted radiator and was warming the petrol. Enclosed, it is probably not dangerous, but there was a hell of a lot of vapour coming out of that warm tank when we took the filler off, and it only takes a spark!
In Shrewsbury we got lost and separated trying to find a pub listed in the Good Pub Guide. Fortunately, there was only one GTA in Shrewsbury that night, so we found each other again, and the Dun Cow, which deserves its listing for its food alone. We did one last luggage swop and then I headed for home in the GTA - after all there was a weekend of posing opportunities ahead. And thinking about it, the GTA is the one I would have. The 5 may be quick enough for British roads, immensely practical and nearly £17,000 cheaper than the GTA, but it just isn't special.
In driving terms, the GTA is probably faster from point to point over longer distances where slowing down on undulating, twisty, high-walled roads can be made up for on more open ones. But if you live in an area like the Welsh mountains or Cornwall, the 5 would be quicker. The GTA's handling edge over the 5 is partially blunted by poor visibility, but it is still a significant and entertaining edge. It is also backed up by performance that is stunning where the 5's is just very good. While the GTA is one of the more practical cars of its ilk, the 5 has hatchback versatility. Indeed, a household with a GTA would probably need a hatchback as 'backup' for the bigger carrying jobs. On fuel economy, the 5 managed a creditable 28.6mpg, but the GTA still did well with 24.2mpg. But one thing the 5 hasn't got is that supercar presence, which the GTA has by the ton. It feels special and looks special and it draws much more attention than even some Porsches, perhaps partly because it is less common. And no matter how good they make hot hatches, they will still look friendly and dependable, like a tortoise, rather than sleek and inspiring like the hare.
