Top Gear suspension: Megane Renault Sport 275 Trophy-R beats paparazzi

My recent trouble with Top Gear left me with two options: lie low or get behind the wheel of a very fast car.

Non-essential extras - like sat-nav and air-conditioning - have all been removed to make the car lighter.

When the BBC announced I was to be suspended from my job on Top Gear, I thought it would be a good idea to maintain a low profile. Which in one big respect was a bit tricky because the car I had on test that week was the Megane Renault Sport 275 Trophy-R. And it’s about as under-the-radar as a Day-Glo B-52.

To make matters worse, my own Mercedes chose the day of the announcement to explode. And I do mean explode. After start-up it sounded as if four of the cylinders were full of plastic explosive. I therefore decided to use my bicycle. But the chain came off. And before I could get it back on, about two and a half million photographers and news crews had descended on my London flat.

I thought about asking my colleague and friend AA Gill to come and pick me up, but he is the worst driver in the world. And I didn’t think he’d be able to manage the job of driving through a photographic scrum without making everything worse. So. It was the Renault, complete with its white body, black roof, red wheels and copious writing down the side.

Let me walk you through the headlines of this vehicle. It starts out in life as a Renault Megane, a car much favoured by the sort of person who is not interested in cars. Then it is altered, completely.

It comes with a turbocharged 2.0-litre engine, but you choose how much power you would like it to develop. Set the on-board computer to Normal mode and you get 184kw, which in a three-door hatchback such as this is what engineers call “a lot”. If you put the computer in Sport or Race mode, you get 202Kw, which causes engineers to say, “Don’t be silly.”

In Mad mode it goes from 0-100km/h in 5.8 seconds, and will then keep on accelerating until you’re doing the speed of sound. An earlier hot Megane — the R26 R — was so fast that in 2008 it set a new Nurburgring lap record for front-drive cars.

Some of that is down to the almost completely bald tyres, which come with a warning notice in big, bold type telling you not to expect any grip at all if it even looks like rain and that if it is wet, you should keep the traction control on or you will skid off the road and die. Die, d’you hear?

Then you have the adjustable dampers from Ohlins, PerfoHub double-axis front suspension, Akrapovic titanium exhaust and, inside, almost nothing at all. The rear seats have been replaced with air, the sat nav is gone, the airconditioning is gone, even the rear wiper is gone. Anything that weighs anything at all has been ditched.

You can get all the stuff that has been taken out put back in. But since this adds a lot to the already steep asking price and defeats the purpose, I wouldn’t bother.

You get the drift, anyway. It’s not what you want for a low-profile week when you are trying to stay out of the spotlight. And yet ... as it turned out, it was exactly what I wanted because, ooh, some of those paparazzi are persistent. They work in teams, using scooters and cars so that you can run but you can’t hide. Especially if you’re in a white car with red wheels and lots of writing on the sides.

As they seem to have no qualms about telling you all what I do and where I go, I hope they won’t mind if I explain what they do. Jump red lights. Carve up buses. Do more than 160km/h on the Westway. (Yes, you did.) The paparazzi are like Terminators. They absolutely will not stop.

I don’t want to use the D-word but I can quite understand how that drunken idiot at the wheel of the Mercedes in Paris ended up slamming into the tunnel support. Because when you are being hounded, it’s easy to lose concentration.

I thought about abandoning the car and using the Tube, and I thought about asking for a bit of help from the police. But, hey, in my old job I got a lot of practice at driving while doing other things, so it wasn’t much of a challenge to shake them off. This is because the bike guys are a bit thick.

But there was a woman in a Volkswagen Golf who was very impressive: smooth and tenacious. If a job vacancy does crop up on Top Gear, she’d be ideal. She was in a Golf diesel and I was in a 202kW Megane and for about half an hour it was simply impossible to get free.

And at this point some of you will be starting to wonder: what is the point of buying a fast car? Because, yes, at the Nurburgring I could have left her far behind, but I was in Marylebone and, unlike her, I had to obey the rules of the road.

But it’s missing the point because, ooh, the Renault is fun. It’s firm, yes, but unlike all the other firm cars I’ve driven it’s not stupid. There’s a compliance to the shock absorbers that means you don’t have to grit your teeth and squint every time you go over a pothole.

The only thing I’m not sure about was the little green light that came on telling me when to change up. I’m in a racing car, for heaven’s sake, being chased by Divina Galica. I’m not on a bloody economy run.

Mostly, though, I loved this car more than Divina loved her Golf because she was driving for a reason. It was her job. And her job, she thinks, matters (it doesn’t). Whereas I was driving for the sheer sport of shaking her off. I was only going out to buy my son’s birthday present. Why would I care if she snapped me doing that?

And, yes, reader, I won. I went down a back alley blocked by a lorry. Many builders were standing around, and when I apprised them of the situation, they agreed to move it. Then, before Golf lady could follow, they put it back in the middle of the road. Cheers, lads.

Megane Renault sport 275 Trophy-R: Performance hatchback

Engine: 2.0-litre, turbocharged four cylinder

Outputs: 202kW at 5500rpm, 360Nm at 3000rpm

Transmission: Six-speed manual, front-wheel drive

Average fuel consumption: 7.5 litres per 100km

Price: £36,430 ($61,990 plus on-road costs)

Rating: 4 out of 5

Verdict: Pray the paparazzi never get their paws on this.