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The Closest Near-Crash Ever: Renault Clio RS at the Nurburgring

The Clio RS has always been considered to be the best way in which to go fast cheaply. From its first incarnations, the 2-liter lump under the bonnet and suspension created by motorsport gurus in France made this a sweet ride.
Clio RS crash at the Nurburgring 1 photo
Photo: screenshot from Youtube
As good as it is, the Clio RS remains a high-powered family hatch with a really short wheelbase, which means it's prone to spin and crash in some situations. This next video was taken during this Sunday's Nurburgring tourist track days and show an old Renault hot hatch almost crashing.

The driver's biggest mistake is that he comes in way too hot into a right-handed corner. The Clio RS ends up with all four wheels in the sand trap. The left tires are loaded by he cornering forces, so when he steps off the gas, the car spins out. Fortunately, there was nobody around him and he crashed in an area where the Nordschleife was wide enough.

We believe the car being nearly crashed here is the Clio RS 172 and Renault fans are probably going to tell us we're wrong. But, it's clearly a second generation Clio with the facelift and without the twin pipe exhaust system of the later 182. Regardless of the exact version, this driver is lucky he didn't crash because hot hatches of that era didn't have a lot of airbags.

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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