I moved from 182 to 200 to 220 Trophy. I owned the 182 and 200 for about 6yrs each before moving to a 220 Trophy last year. All of them are used as daily drivers about 40 miles a day, but down to 25 miles a day since last May due to office move.
For me the Mk4 ECD is a much better daily then the others. The 182 and 200 are amazing on the right road, but they didn’t shine sitting in traffic or driving along in a train of cars doing 25 mph. On clear road, no traffic, a few twisties – the 182 and 200 probably have a bit of an edge in terms of fun, however for me the EDC is much better the rest of the time. Just put it in drive and go when you just want to drive to work, press the RS drive button to put it into sport when you want it a bit more fun.
EDC gearbox – you’ll either love it or hate it. Before the Trophy I’d never even driven an automatic in nearly 20yrs of driving, now I’d find it hard to go back to a manual. If you want to go manual in the EDC all you have to do is pull an up or downshift and it will go manual for 10 seconds, so you can approach a nice bit of road have some fun, then after 10 seconds of no changes, it’ll go back to being an auto. You can also push the gear lever to the left and it will stay in manual mode, you can then also pull the gear lever back / forward to shift too.
I think that the facelift EDC’s (And some later pre-facelifts) have the updated Trophy gearbox. When the Trophy first came out, it was listed as one of the differences in the brochures, but there’s no mention of any difference in shift speeds in more recent brochures.
Is a turbo car more fun than a N/A – probably not, it’s very subjective. The EDC engine doesn’t seem to make any noise, which all comes from the exhaust – whereas the 200 engine sounded great. However put the EDC into sport mode, foot flat on the floor and pull a shift near the top of the rev range and you’ll love the noise from the exhaust. You’ll also love the torque, you don’t need revs as it has torque low down where you use it more often in normal driving.
MPG is difficult to give an accurate figure. I got 35 – 36 mpg from the 182, about 33 -34 mpg from the 200, however I moved work locations last May, so only had about 2-3 weeks doing the same journey in the EDC which I got about 35mpg, slightly better than the 200.
Range wise, the EDC has a smaller tank than the 200 (55l vs 45l – however I could be wrong) I think 182 range matched that of the EDC, but both less than the 200 from my experience.
If possible look at Trophy over the base 200 EDC. They have better equipment (R-Link 2 infotainment instead of Media Nav, rear parking camera, front parking sensors, climate control, folding mirrors) that you don’t get in the standard 200 EDC.
As others have said, you have to get one to test drive for a decent amount of time. I went into my test drive expecting to be disappointed due to poor reviews, but I wasn’t. It’s not a car for everybody, but as somebody who’s been driving Renault Sport cars since 2004, and now in my mid/late 30’s it’s a more grown up car. If I was in my early/mid 20’s perhaps I’d have hated it, but now I don’t care about it being 5 door, as once your friends / family are older, you feel a bit of an idiot squeezing them into the back of a 3 door car.
Hope that covers some of what you wanted to know.
