Fail of the century #23: Clio RS MK IV

Top Gear Top Fact! The phrase “the empire on which the sun never set” was first used to describe not the British Empire, but the Habsburg Empire of the 16th century: an empire on which, you won’t fail to notice, the sun has indeed long since set. As it has on the British Empire, and every other apparently all-powerful, everlasting imperium in history.

And so to 2012’s Clio RenaultSport, the car historians will surely regard as the sundown moment on one of the greatest fast car bloodlines of them all: the Hot Clio Dynasty. Viewed in isolation, the MkIV Clio RS was... fine. Decently rapid, looked lairy enough, navigated corners without plummeting into a storm drain.

Problem was, you couldn’t view the MkIV Clio RS in isolation. Because it was heir to a royal house that began with 1993’s Clio Williams (the Great Willy!) and grew from strength to strength under the masterly stewardship of the Clios 172, 182, 197 and 200. Which, OK, might read like an index of Ceefax pages, but represented the hottest of hot hatch hot streaks: a two-decade run of sublime, fizzy, manually gearboxed, naturally aspirated supremacy.

All of which the MkIV ditched for a soulless, flatulent turbo engine, and an even-more-soulless double-clutch gearbox. The bloodline was broken, the empire fell, the Hot Fiestas rose to power. This concludes today’s history lesson.