Long wait for new Renault Megane RS '300'

Renault Sport will continue to produce the Megane RS 275 Coupe until the end of 2016, by which time the new Megane hatchback will have arrived in Australia – the world's second largest RS market behind France and home to 10 per cent of all Clio RS sales annually.

However, it concedes that production of the next-generation Megane RS, which will no longer be a coupe but may still come with a manual transmission, will not begin immediately and won't say how long Renault's hottest model will be unavailable.

"Even though the new Megane has been launched, current Megane RS will be on sale for at least another year," said Renault Sport's global boss Regis Fricotte at this week's Frankfurt motor show, where the latest Megane made its world debut.

"We are just launching the hatchback of the new shape, but the coupe and estate of the current Megane are still in production, so we continue RS production until the end of next year, so we still have Megane RS."

Asked how long the Megane RS would be out of production, Fricotte said: "We are not talking about the new model. Obviously there will be one, but I'm not going to talk about that.

"There probably will be a gap, but I'm not going to tell you how long."

It's been widely reported that the new Megane RS, when it eventually arrives, will not be available as a coupe. Renault group design chief Laurens van den Acker said the decision was made to contain the company's model derivative growth.

"I think we always have a soft spot for coupes but realistically we also have to keep in mind that from a family perspective, from a model perspective, on the one hand we need to increase our line-up with new crossovers because we didn't have any crossovers, we need to expand into trucks, we need to keep present in the normal segments and in the meantime we need to not finish with 60 variations and just keep adding.

"So we had to cut some variants somewhere, so making a vehicle like we did with the Clio, which many people didn't notice had five doors, it's possible to make a sporty looking five-door in my view and take a bit of compromise by not making a coupe. It would have been too many models," he said.

Asked if customers will miss the Megane RS Coupe, Fricotte said: "You'll have to wait and see. Because we do derivatives, if there had been a coupe in the new Megane range, the next Megane RS or maybe the Megane GT would have existed as a coupe or would have only been coupe.

"Considering there is no coupe in the Megane range this GT and RS cannot be a coupe. The design of a coupe is by definition more sporty than a five-door hatchback but you can make a very sporty design on a five-door hatchback.

"It's not an issue for us. The previous Megane generation was three- and five-door hatch but the RS still looked good. If you look at Golf GTI, [Honda] Civic, Ford [Focus], Opel [Astra], they don't have a dedicated sports car shape.

"Megane RS global sales up on last year. That model is still very active even after the introduction of competitors like Honda Civic R. From what we are reading in the press, the Megane RS is still the benchmark in the segment."

Renault's RS chief would not talk specifics of the new Megane RS, but confirmed it will be more powerful – possibly as much as 300hp (224kW) – to compete with its chief hot hatch rivals.

"We need to increase performance because as you can see the market in the C-segment is going towards 300 plus horsepower – the Golf R, the Focus, the Civic R is all going up.

"On average the increase in horsepower is 5hp per annum. When we launched the new Megane RS in 2010 we were at 250hp. Today we're at 275 and if you look at the competitors they are the same.

"So we've got to increase the performance, but it's not only about performance, it's the match between performance, emissions and chassis.

"We've never had the car the most powerful, but I believe we've had the car the most efficient especially on the track."

Fricotte would not be drawn on exact engine output or whether the new Megane RS '300' would need to downsize from its current 2.0-litre turbo-petrol engine to sufficiently reduce its emissions.

"Today the Megane RS is 174 grams (of CO2 per km), so obviously that's a bit high. But two years ago it was 190, so even on that engine we've been able to reduce the CO2 emission significantly. We have new technologies, we moved from Euro 5 to 6, we have start and stop..."

Perhaps more importantly for Megane RS is the controversial question of a manual transmission. The existing Megane RS 275 is manual-only but the latest Clio RS 200 is EDC dual-clutch automatic-only, leading to fears the new Megane RS will be too.

"It depends on the positioning you want for the car," said Fricotte. "With Clio we wanted to have something which was less radical than the previous Clio, which was very strong on the track, but far less comfortable for daily use.

"We wanted to rebalance that equilibrium between the two. That's what we did and now we're selling more Clio RS than we were previous Clio RS.

"Depending on which way you go there is always demand to go back on the other side. Today people say you should introduce a Clio manual to make it more radical. That's not what we wanted to do.

"New Clio RS is more comfortable as well as faster than before. Clio 4 is not a car designed to spend a day on the track. Obviously you can do it because it's an RS but that was not the objective.

"Megane RS is still very good on track. That doesn't mean that in the future we will not have manual and double-clutch. That's open. Maybe we will have both, maybe we'll have only one. It's still in the process."

Fricotte would not confirm expectations the next Megane RS will come with the same new rear-wheel steering system developed by Renault Sport for the new Megane GT, but he did rule out all-wheel drive.

"Our philosophy is to derivate from Renault. If one day there is a Renault with all-wheel drive then why not? But it would go too far if you want to put 4WD and the entry cost to change completely."

The global RS chief also ruled out hybrid power for at least the next generation of Megane RS, despite the fact a mild hybrid version of the new five-door will be offered in some markets.

"It's far too early to talk about that [hybrid]. There's nothing today that's close enough to talk about. [But] There is nothing that says we'll never look at hybrid."