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How much fun can you have for £15k?... Watch Video

Yes, but if you lived across the pond, here in Ireland this video would be titled "How much fun you can have for £25,800 (€32,000)" which is exactly what a Clio Renaultsport costs over here (I realise the Cup is £1,000 cheaper but it's not available on the Renault Ireland site). How can the EU allow this?!

Is Ireland really that expensive, ****!

Love the bit half way through where they show the Swift and then announce the VXR! Thought Sutcliffe was really good though and good behind the camera especially when driving. Good real world test as well.

Steve Sutcliffe looks and sounds just like Andy Bell from Erasure! He should do a couple of laps in a leopard-skin leotard- that way he could shed a couple of kilos and gain 1/10th of a second. Anyway, I'm sure had the Renault and Corsa swapped badges the (Reanault badged) Corsa would have won.... The Corsa is obviously the better-balanced car. It's faster against the clock and 99% of people driving these cars really don't need the Clio's lively rear-end....

Is £15k the lowest threshold Autocar will consider 'fun' is available at?

 

 I noticed that Sutcliffe's steering inputs when driving the Clio were much sharper than for the other two - the Swift looked positively relaxing in comparison! How about a more powerful version, Suzuki?

NiallOswald:

 I noticed that Sutcliffe's steering inputs when driving the Clio were much sharper than for the other two - the Swift looked positively relaxing in comparison! How about a more powerful version, Suzuki?

There are already supercharged Swift Sports on the road in Japan!

 

I noticed in the article that the Fiesta ST was slightly discounted in its ranking as it blew the £15K budget due to having '£1800' of modifications.

The only problem is that the car in the test has the full set of available extras, which add up to rather more than £1800.

For a start the seats are £1,950.69 (+fitting), the dampers are £605 (+fitting), and then there's another £1,838 (+fitting) for the exhaust, air intake, cams, remap etc.

So I would guess that car probably owes over £5K in modifications once they're installed, which puts it well outside the group criteria.

I would also guess the ownership costs are also a little higher than some others in the group, as being dealer modifications rather than factory options insurance costs may be significantly higher than the standard model.

While I love the car the price is excessive for what it is, yet no-one ever really seems to pick up that they're reviewing a £20K Fiesta.

Any comments from the team?

And would this have had any effect on the results of the test?

If you can afford the Clio or Corsa, then buy the Swift Sport and spent the extra 5k on serious mods, since you can pick one up for 11k and they come with a better standard package too :D 

...or buy a second hand M3 / S2000 / Boxster!

Great to see the Swift in the top three.  I have owned one for the last 18 months and covered over 30k between north and South Wales.  It knocks spots of my wife's Leon Cupra for driver appeal, although the Cupra is a fair bit quicker!!

montgomery:

The Corsa is obviously the better-balanced car. It's faster against the clock and 99% of people driving these cars really don't need the Clio's lively rear-end....

 

 It's obviously not, as every single test comparing them shows.

Remember the 5th Gear test where Tiff said he had no confidence in pushing the Corsa as he didn't know what it was going to do next? Even then the standard 197 monstered it around the track due to it's better composure in the corners.

 Even here Sutcliffe says of the Clio that at 10/10ths it doesn't bite back. Having lived with one for a year I can tell you the back end isn't at all lively and is very progressive.

 99% of people driving don't need the Corsa's ChaVXR image.