This Mint Renault Sport Clio 182 Trophy Is Now More Expensive Than It Was New

Just because a limited-edition car has relatively low mileage and is rare these days doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a highly valuable collector’s piece, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped this eBay seller from asking a faintly ridiculous £18,000 for a 2005 Renault Sport Clio 182 Trophy.

It has covered 16,900 miles from new, when it cost £15,500, and must be one of the lowest-mileage examples of the limited-edition Trophy left in the UK, after only 525 were built for our market in 2005. It’s lived a quiet life, covering less than 6000 miles in its first two years, less than 4000 in the next two, less than 3000 in the two after that and just a few hundred since 2015.

Northern Irish dealer Performance Cars NI have the keys at present. It hasn’t been serviced every year, owing largely to that minuscule mileage, with the biggest gap in the service history some four years long, but with every service completed by Rentech in Portsmouth, including its most recent one in March 2017, things should be in good order. The seller says that all timing belts and pulleys have been replaced, and that the legendary (and expensive) Sachs dampers are “absolutely flawless and in perfect condition.”

It has unblemished factory-standard Recaro seats, no wear on the steering wheel and no signs of fading on the Capsicum Red paint. It doesn’t have the original tyres, but the Michelin Pilot Exalto PE2s have been replaced with Pilot Sport 3s, which should be a close match in handling terms.

As per the five services all completed by Rentech in the same location, this car has only had one owner from new, who in recent years has obviously seen rising 182 Trophy values and stopped driving it. Even so, tidy ones were quite recently only fetching £6000.

This one has both original keys, all the original paperwork and, weirdly, a copy of every single magazine that ever reviewed the 182 Trophy. There’s an unopened paint correction pen and even Renault’s car-specific ‘accident management pack’, which includes a camera and a notepad.

It looks to be located 15 minutes from two Belfast airports and the city’s port, but delivery, the dealer says, can be arranged to anywhere in the UK and Ireland. For £17,995, I’d expect it delivered complete with 72 hours of Kate Upton’s time and tickets to a gig that Ed Sheeran would be playing in my lounge.

If, like us, you think the price is a bit steep even bearing in mind the great condition, you’re out of luck, because we can’t find a single other 182 Trophy in the general classifieds. There are plenty of tidy-looking 182s for around £2000, though, and they’re hardly any less fun…