What’s the greatest French hot hatch of them all? TG readers have decided

France is to hot hatchbacks what Switzerland is to chocolate or Britain is to terrible weather: they just fit. And over the years, France has produced a wonderful catalogue of hot hatchbacks, with one of its most coveted examples, the Peugeot 205 GTI, celebrating its 40th birthday this week.

In recognition of this, we wanted to find out if our readers thought it was the outright best hot hatchback to come from the nation, or if a rival from Citroen or Renault would snatch the title. And here are our top picks from what you lot had to say, starting with Dan: “It's not a ‘true’ hot hatch, more of a track weapon, but I'd vote for the Renault Megane R26.R. It has a four-cylinder turbocharged rocket with plastic windows and stickers that add five BHP each.”

Tylas Moerti agreed: “It’s just so wild and unapologetic in its approach of becoming a road-going touring car, yet if you don’t know your cars it’ll just fly under the radar as some sort of riced-up Megane driven by a pensioner. Never again will we see a four-cylinder humdrum front-wheel drive hatch with exactly the same focus towards performance, driving focus and lightweight technology (and the same amount of garish red stripes and wheels) as a Porsche GT3 RS.”

Sticking with the Renault theme, here’s Andy Elms’ alternative: “I always had a thing for the Clio Williams. Compared with later models it wasn’t the fastest, but it always seemed the simplest. It never looked as if it was trying too hard when parked up.”

A fair assessment, since the untrained eye would likely dispel the Clio Williams as a Sunday afternoon shed build, when in truth, it’s far from that. Moving on to something much more hardcore, this response from Bogumil is certainly worth considering: 

“The Peugeot 205 T16 has a place in my heart because Timo Salonen and Ari Vatanen were two of the most dedicated fighter pilots. Juha Kankkunen once mentioned in an interview that while the Audis of the time were faster in the straights and had a lot of grip and downforce, the brakes could not cope with the heavy nose of the twisted sections. They had nothing on the mid-engined Peugeot 205 T16, which was much more balanced and faster on such sections.”

Karol Jalowy provided further support for this: “It’s a homologation-bred, mid-engined, all-wheel drive hatchback, making it the perfect choice. Its rally version was even the most successful car in the legendary Group B rally. I truly believe it is the most special car of its class.”

And while Chezndave did agree on the choice of car, the trim they opted for was the ‘1.3 Rallye’, since it’s actually useable as a daily. “As much as I love it, I have to disallow the much-mentioned-in-these-comments 205 T16. It doesn’t count, since it shares virtually nothing with any other 205. And if you open your hatch to put the shopping in, the ice cream will have melted by the time you get home and you’ll need an expensive new intercooler. A proper hot hatch has to be a hot version of an ordinary one-litre shopping car your nan drives.”

Now let’s jump to a few curveball options, beginning with Jibs: “I’ve had R26 Meganes and numerous Saxos, the Clio Cup even stands out for me as a serious back road tool where the suspension just works so beautifully with the light mass over roads where other cars get upset. But the first car I drove was a humble Citroen AX, and I loved it so much I still own a modified one with a VTS Saxo engine. I’ve had it for over 25 years now. It’s cheap, light, has a supple suspension and cheeky French looks. Oh, and wine holders that fit two-litre coke bottles.”

Jibs' mention of the Saxo is the perfect cue to bring Inventive Username’s comment in: “For me, there’s something about a Saxo VTR. It’s cheap, light, simple and extremely accessible to a great many, while still being a big old step in performance up from a Corsa 1.2. It’s a hot hatch from back when the genre was about bringing versatile enjoyment to absolutely as many people as possible.”

Our final inclusion for this week comes from Peterson, who has a habit of writing comments that simply can’t be ignored in these discussions. Here’s what they had to say: “It's not a hot hatch, but I'll just say it: the Renault Twingo. Is it fast? Wrong question. How brave are you? Now we're talking. It's the beater, the camper, the carry-on, the curve carver, the city shuttle, the Instagram icon, the first car, the canvas, the attention grabber. It's the fun car. And it's not just you having fun; you're sharing the fun with the whole world.”

A brilliant thread of arguments in this edition of our Question of the Week, but as we suspected from the start, the Peugeot 205 GTI seems to be the strong favourite across our readership. A fitting way to celebrate its 40th birthday, then.

Stay tuned for the next episode, which drops this coming Monday and concerns... very fast bits of asphalt. Au revoir, readers!