It's Prodrive's 600bhp Megane World Rallycross car

Meet the Megane RS RX, one of Prodrive's most important ever cars

The Megane RS RX not only has a name that’s hard to say while drunk, but a chassis designed from the ground up to be a lairy, hairy rallycross car. There’s no simple flinging of power and wings at a stock Megane RS and seeing what sticks, but then what else would you expect? Prodrive are the people behind McRae and Burns’ utterly iconic Subaru rally cars…

Prodrive describes it as the first ground-up rallycross car, in fact, and the ethos is no more prevalent than with the engine. Its engineers concluded that a rallycross car is far better with a longitudinal engine layout, like you find in proper sports cars and supercars.

As a relatively mainstream front-driven hot hatch, though, the Megane is a transverse engine. So Prodrive ripped the whole thing out and started again, designing a fully bespoke 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo that’s mounted longitudinally, to aid centre of gravity and other such nerdiness.