For me it was the Launch of the Year. Renault had chosen the Knysna Hill Climb event to launch its new Mégane RS, and hopped on board with massive sponsorship for the whole event, which has all the makings of a block-buster in years to come.
Organised by former journo and Formula Ford racer Ian Shrosbree – for some years now a resident in Knysna – this was the second running of the event, last year the great Sarel van der Merwe having set Fastest Time of the Day (FTD) in an Owen Ashley Mustang (kind of a space frame budget Wesbank racer with a fibreglass Mustang clone body and plenty of V8 grunt.
The run is held on the road leading up to the Simola Golf Estate and it’s short and sharp, the accent being on fast sweeps rather than tight twisties.
And us motoring hacks, invited to the launch of the Renault Megane RS, as well as Renault Sport tweaked versions of the Clio and Twingo with Gordini-heritage leanings, would get the chance to show our mettle up the climb too.
Sounded like a no-brainer from everyone’s perspective and that’s the way it turned out. We had a chance to suss out the new Megane RS in the mountains around George and Oudtshoorn before our first run up to the Golf Estate on the Friday, and that was a good thing.
We first got to grips with things in the little 1,6-litre non-turbo Twingo Gordini, then progressed to the turbo Mégane RS, and finally had our signature runs in the Cup version of the RS, which features tractions aids such as extra firm suspension and a limited slip diff.
The new Mégane RS looks slightly less dramatic than its predecessor, but believe me it’s one competent piece of hot-hatchdom. Finally it now has steering feel to go with grip that has always been prodigious and is now even more so. The steering loads up progressively and communicates the state of grip from the front tyres loud and clear, and the grip levels are even higher than before.
The turbocharged mill has been tweaked too, to produce 184 kW as opposed to the 169 kW of the previous R26 version.
Me, I take these things conservatively these days, ever since I trashed a very expensive Le Mans racer very publicly at Kyalami about a decade ago. As I tell everyone who’ll listen nowadays, "Yeah, okay, but what about the occasional good things I did in racing saloons?" But their eyes seem to glaze and they bring the subject to the R300 000 worth of damage I apparently did by simply pressing the accelerator pedal down about 3 mm deeper than I should have.
So now I ease into things, my approach to the mountain on the Friday and the Saturday being smooth but a bit sissy-ish, which put me into eighth spot amongst the jounros, whereas only the top six runners went through to the Sunday finals.
You may scoff as to why us motoring hacks are going on about our times up the hill, but let me tell you: the motoring scribes acquitted themselves extremely well. The top journo time was only about 10 per cent off the fastest time of the day, set by (arguably) a modified Nismo Nissan GTR with four wheel drive, with an only slightly less-powerful Mistubishi Evo 8 running second (the times had it the other way round, but the owner of both cars assured me the Nissan was, in fact, quicker.
Unless you are bed-rock crazy, you leave a big margin for error on runs like this, because the climb only lasts around 52 seconds in a Renault driven at the limit, and as you only get to do about six runs , you have precious little time to find the outer limits.
For the record, a kid called Eddy Alberts of Extreme Car and Leisure was the fastest journo, amazing because he has hardly even driven cars up to now being a biker. Egmont Sippel from Rapport (usually the fastest journo anywhere, any time) was second (Eggie was feeling off-colour, I suspect) and Ignition TV presenter Marius Roberts third. It was great for Roberts, his first event of this type, to place right up there with the top scribes and keep it all nice and neat and tidy too.
As for young Eddy, well, he races superbikes, so an extra pair of wheels must have seemed like an unfair advantage to him.
The crowds that showed up for the climb on the Saturday proved just what a pull this kind of event has, numbering in the many, many thousands, and providing one welcome shot into the main artery of the Knysna economy at a time of year when there is a lull in the tourist season.
Renault gained huge publicity for its brand and its new models, and as for Shros and his organising team, a big well done.
There were over 150 “proper” entries for the event, ranging from GTRs, Luminas-on-Gas, Porsches, Ferraris, Aerial Atoms, and the like to classic MG specials from the “50s, and a sprinkling of hot Corollas, Golfs and 3 Series Beemers from local enthusiasts.
As for the honours, officially that went to Geoff Mortimer in the highly modded Evo 8, from Wilhelm Baard in the GTR, both cars tweaked by the famous NX-Gen tuning firm in Jo’burg.
Renault should have been pleased with Geoff Mortimer’s victory. After all way back in 1970 he won the SA Saloon Car Championship in a much-modified Renault R8. Maybe next year they’ll build him a four-wheel-drive version of the Megane RS, to enable him to beat his Evo time set this year. Oh, and Geoff is now 74 years-old!
