Hot Hatch

What is there to say about the Honda Civic Type R that hasn’t already been said? It’s lightning quick, only comes with a manual and a clutch pedal, can stow all sorts of stuff inside its oh-so practical Honda hatch, and looks like a high school kid’s rendition of what a tuned Japanese rocket ship should look like in real life.

Months after embarking upon a jaw-droppingly scenic trip across the Pacific Northwest in the all-new Nissan Rogue Sport, I find myself revisiting the little miscreant once more with an enthusiast’s eye. Perhaps it was Nissan’s badass Star Wars display booth at the Los Angeles Auto Show, or the epic cinematic saga that is set to unfold on the big screen later this month, but I find great promise in the direction this automaker has taken with its Rogue line.

We don’t get as many hot hatches here in the US as I think we deserve, so we often have to live vicariously through folks in Europe to get our fix. Recently, the guys at UK car buying site carwow got their hands on five hot hatches and decided to line them up for a little drag race.

I’ll be the first to admit that the Toyota Yaris and the Ford Fiesta aren’t exactly the cars that I would want to add to my stable given any choice out there. However, if my requirements were a fun to drive car with a little performance and low price, the Fiesta ST would certainly be in the running.

Another of the car brands that folks in Europe can get hands on that we can’t here in the US is Renault. Most of their car’s are pretty boring, so we don’t lament that fact much.

We’ve already seen a little bit of the Ford Focus RS being hooned around by Ken Block for its premiere, and now we have just a little more driving footage to enjoy. In this brief promo spot from Ford, we get to see the new RS tearing up the kind of curvy, rally type roads it was meant for.

While there’s little chance we’ll see Renault cars sold in the U.S. any time soon, cars like the Renault Megane 275 Trophy make us wish they would reconsider. This incredible little hot hatch has demonstrated its aplomb, its stripped down track variant, the 275 Trophy-R turned in the top front-wheel drive Nurburgring time – just 7 minutes 54.36 seconds, and frankly the car just looks like a ton of fun.