What happened in MOTOR 17 years ago? The WRX takes on the Integra Type S and Renault Sport Mégane

Grudge Match

Bully boys, Integra and Mégane, pull on their gloves and jump in the ring with king Rex

This feature was first published in MOTOR magazine's January 2005 issue

The wipers are flailing and only just holding their ground against the rain. The cambered blacktop flips in and out of the mountain’s folds.

According to the legend, this is Rex country and this is definitely Rex weather. It’s a long-held myth that Subaru’s giant-killer does its best work in the wet. But Honda’s Integra Type S and Renault’s Sport Mégane 225 might finally be the cars to test the myth’s validity.

The WRX is quick, for sure, but extracting the last drop of potential from the flat-four all-paw is a task that’s neither pleasant, nor recommended for the mild of talent or meek of commitment. However, there are few cars more adjustable on the throttle than Subaru’s hairy-chested legend.

And yet there’s something about the WRX that, on this day, just won’t go away. It’s bronzed, two door, screaming its 8500rpm tits off and it’s a scream that’s well within earshot. It’s not gaining, but it’s not losing ground, either. It’s just always there.

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In a straight fight, on paper, the Integra Type S seems horribly outgunned against a WRX and Renault’s clumsily-named Sport Mégane 225. Nobody seems to have told the Honda, though.

Derided as a poor imitation of the blockbuster Type R, the Type S is turning critics into fans by asking for nothing but an uncomplicated, engaging driving technique to bring out its best – and by being faster in a straight line than either of its Type R predecessors.

The Sport Mégane, though, has no real Australian predecessors. Born of the same gunsmiths responsible for the Sport Clio, the Megsy’s controversially big-butted body gives it a far bigger interior than its wheelbase suggests is possible.

But, forget all that, because the Megsy is all about the engine. Not especially high tech, the turbo 2.0-litre falls three kilowatts shy of the WRX’s 168kW output but, at 5500rpm, it gets there 500 revs sooner.

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That gives it some advantage, but chasing power’s not really its go. It’s a torquey little sucker, and it’s proud of it. While Rexes have traditionally struggled at low revs, the Renault gives 90 percent of its peak torque from 2000rpm and, a thousand revs later, it pushes 300Nm past the flywheel. And, this with a six-speed ’box attached to it. The Subaru has the same torque, but gets there 600 revs later, has only five forward gears and, to be honest, most people won’t have the patience to wait while the turbo organises itself.

Pasted, torque-wise, is the Honda. A paltry 194Nm arrives very late in the game – at a stratospheric 7000rpm. While it never feels like its delivering any more than that, the raw numbers belie its strength. Let’s just say that, in most gears, it’s no worse off in a 1500rpm rolling in-gear burst than the WRX.

There’s a lot of the Honda’s core right there, actually. Our initial impression is of a car without the integrity of its predecessors, but really, it lacks only for raucousness.

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It’s old-school light at 1230kg, and it’s got a long wheelbase. In fact, it’s got a lot of little details which make it a contender. Well-driven Integra Type Rs have long been the mongoose to the WRX’s cobra, and changing one letter hasn’t altered the balance. But, at similar money to the Honda, and at similar output to the Rex, has Renault come up with a bigger, bolder Sport Clio to tip the scales?

Well, no. What it has come up with is the Commodore SS of hatchbacks. It’s got a superbly compliant ride, it’s luxurious with fabulous seating, it’s well appointed, it’s got bags of easily accessible grunt in a straight line and it rarely seems like it’s caught in the wrong gear. It just doesn’t have the Clio’s chassis poise.

Up to eight-tenths, the Sport Mégane is a pretty pleasant thing, left in taller gears to hiss in deep-boosted effort. Push harder than that, and the chassis package begins to unravel at the seams.

The soft-sidewalled Continentals don’t do its handling precision any favours, and the shockingly intrusive skid control system doesn’t help, either. You can turn it off, but above 50km/h it defaults back on again. It’s open to debate as to whether its job is to save the driver or to save corporate embarrassment should enthusiasts find out just how disappointingly short of the class benchmarks the Mégane’s chassis engineering stopped.

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Pushed on wet, second-gear corners it often runs wide. It’s then a matter of balancing its ills with a combination of skid control and altering the weight distribution by left-foot braking. Even then, bites from the software constantly transfer the weight between the outside front and the outside rear and back again.

It’s better in faster corners, and so’s the steering. In the wet, it delivers a delightful constant nibbling, giving precise details of the strains on its front tyres and asking for slight alterations in angle. It’s a better car in the rain than it is in the dry. When the sun’s shining and the cornering intensity gets high, that enjoyable level of steering feedback turns into serious kickback and, while it has strong mid-corner grip, it leaves plenty of rubber behind as evidence of its endeavours.

Not that the Rex is as convincing on its own at the head of the fast, small-car pack as it was. In the wet, or when being pushed very hard in slow corners, it’s actually a three-wheel drive car.

Because it runs an open front diff, it can be tipped into a corner just so, all cocked up and throttle nailed, only to have the inside front tyre hopping, spinning and scrabbling. And, all the time, it’s falling back into the understeer the driver’s so painstakingly tried to avoid.

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The Rex’s steering is light, quick in the rack (and the steering wheel feels HUGE) but the rear suspension seems soft on roll; a combination that never quite feels cohesive, and driving it hard is not for the faint hearted.

In faster corners it squats in the back and, curiously, it seems more faithful to the steering when the weight’s off the nose. While it demands constant calibration in tighter stuff, it’s a rare treat in fast corners. In the wet, it falls into lovely, languid four-wheel drifts that are the easiest thing in the world to control on the throttle, even pinned to the boards in fourth gear.

But it’s not the pick of the chassis. That’s the Honda’s. Easily the most cohesive, integrated unit here, every part of the Type S works beautifully, asking for roughly the same weighting of input.

A beautifully balanced car in the wet or the dry, the Integra loses nothing to either the Rex or the Mégane uphill, turbo or not. The close-ratio ’box keeps it on the big cam (are you listening, Toyota?) at every shift and its scream, which used to be blood curdling, is now muffled (thanks to sound deadening).

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But, on the whole, it makes up for its torque deficit by being more nimble than either of its rivals. A lot more nimble. It picks metres on both of them with its ability to carry turn-in speed, and while it might not crunch them in a mid-corner static state, it nails them in adjustability. You can put it anywhere you like, change its stance mid-corner, tighten its line with the merest hint of lift-off and it gets out of wet second gear corners better than either of them.

It just point-blank refuses to fall into debilitating understeer and it only loses out on the downhill third gear corners, where the turbo tearaways suffer less from their power-down issues.

The steering is delightfully meaty and, WRX-like, it’s very quick in the rack. Unlike the Subaru, though, that steering speed feels far more in proportion to the way the rest of the car reacts to its yawing, and it’s got steering resistance just off-centre as well.

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What you have when you punt a Type S hard is a willing, happy, unpretentious cohort. It’s forever suggesting you give it little adjustments via the throttle, brake and steering and there’s bundles of feedback. It’s always inviting you to snap its gearbox up or blip out another heel-toe downshift to keep the engine on song. While that all sounds a bit demanding, it successfully manages to make it all hugely involving and entertaining, and it’s so friendly in its nature that it never becomes hard work. It’s just how it asks you to drive it to access its best.

The Honda, surprisingly, has got the best brakes, too. They look like crap (c’mon, Honda – open-spoked 17s offer a great view of the caliper and you give it an unpainted, cast jobbie?), but they do the job. They’re helped in no small way by hauling in 130kg less than the Renault and a full 180kg less than the WRX, but they belie their simple nature.

They’ll all fade if they’re punted too hard for too long, but the Honda will struggle least and come back earliest. Because of its understeer tendencies, you tend to use the WRX’s picks to help it turn, either trailing a bit of brake to the apex or giving it a big left-foot hit or two. Either way, it heats up earlier than the Integra or Renault, its brake pedal is rock hard and there’s little pedal feel to it. Even when it’s got bad fade, it’s still hard and, once it’s started fading, you’re never quite sure of how much power is actually down there. Spooky.

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Renault went to Brembo for all its rotors and its four-piston front calipers, but the front pads are so soft they feel like they came from Nerf. They’re perfect for achieving instant operating temperature in urban situations, but fade fairly quickly out in the open. In their defence, they tend to fade only down to a point and then hold (unlike the WRX), but you expect more from a set of Brembos on a small car.

Again, there’s the SS Commodore line drawn through it and, to back it up, it’s the quickest car in rolling in-gear acceleration – in every gear bar first, where the Rex stands up to the plate. That’s despite the Mégane being the tallest geared car here (it pulls 2700rpm at 120km/h in sixth – the WRX runs 3500 in fifth, the Type S 3500 in sixth). It’s a smooth engine, though there’s little noise to distinguish it.

Its shift action is as slick as anything else here, even though it doesn’t demand constant use. You can’t say that about the WRX, though. Even from highway speeds, it needs to be rowed back into third before it becomes a road rocket.

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Subaru still fits the WRX with brilliant seats while the Renault’s pews are just gorgeous. And they offer plenty of grip too. Honda’s seats aren’t as supportive, with 6 x outer knee bruises to prove it, but they are a better, more liveable compromise than the super sporty and hard Recaros in previous models.

It packs a lot of engineering into the WRX, Subaru, and the trade-off on interior trim levels is starting to show. In this company, a single-DIN, single in-dash CD player with only average sound quality isn’t really where the par mark lives anymore. Honda gives it up with a beaut’ double-DIN in-dash six-stacker and a dash look that you just want to touch.

Standard on the Renault are nerdy things like a chromatic mirror, auto headlights-on and rain-sensing wipers, though a lot of its other controls are less natural to negotiate. Luxurious the Sport Mégane 225 might be, and the grip is actually there; it’s just not a graceful or pleasant exercise to get at it. It’s a bloody nice car, but has a cumbersome chassis and is out of its depth trying to scythe through the hills with a pair of rivals as sharp as these.

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The WRX is still a benchmark car, and it’s more often imagined fighting against V8s than other fours. However, against the relative scalpel that is the Type S, it has nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

OK, the Type S is less extravagantly feral than the Type R was. But, on balance, the Type S is a better car. A better car, too, than the WRX and it easily has the Sport Mégane 225’s measure. It might not be as fast as either of them, but it’ll run them close in the corners, it’s easier on its tyres (and insurance), and it’s the car that’ll make you smile the most.

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