Top five fastest cars to lap Nurburgring … that you can lease

With our guest columnist Alisdair Suttie recently asking why car companies devote so much of their effort telling us how quickly their latest car made it around the Nurburgring and whether (SPOILER!) Hondas new Civic Type R setting a lap record was cause for celebration or concern, it got us wondering …

What other front-wheel drive cars can you lease that have cracked the top 10 fastest Nurburgring lap times?

Hot hatches are all about having fun on the road at the sorts of speeds that keep your licence intact, so below are a handful of performance cars we’ve found while delving into the two million+ deals we currently have on site:

5. Ford Focus ST: 8min:35secs

The 2005 Ford Focus ST was fast and orange, and it tied with the Vauxhall Astra for a lap time of 8:35 ensuring that the two rivals will forever be entwined at tenth position in the fastest Nurburgring laps.

That was then, and now you can lease the latest Focus ST. It’s a bit rough around the edges but it’s a lot of fun to drive.

4. Ford Focus RS: 8min:06secs

In many respects, Ford knew it had to do better and you can’t help but feel the Focus ST result left a sour taste in its mouth. But strangely, all was quiet from the American manufacturer.

As the only independently driven lap on this list, enter Sport Auto and Christian Gebhardt in the Focus RS to do it themselves...

 

3. Seat Leon Cupra: 7min:58secs

The Seat Leon Cupra sits at #5 in the overall top 10 of the Nurburgring’s fastest hot hatches. While the Leon ST Cupra 280 is the fastest estate to lap the track, the hatchback Cupra couldn’t quite compare but still posted a highly respectable time of under eight minutes.

 

2. Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport: 7min:47secs

It was only just last year that the Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport managed to smash the Nurburgring lap record… twice.

First was in May, beating the previous record of 7:50 held by the 2015 edition of the Honda Civic Type R. Then towards the end of the year Volkswagen decided to smash their own record just for the hell of it and/or because the weather conditions were more favourable. This ended in VW shaving a couple of seconds off their own time, posting an even better lap of 7:47.

 

1. Honda Civic Type R: 7min:43secs

Honda’s new Civic Type R setting a new front-wheel drive production car record of 7 mins 43.8 secs is impressive and raises the bar in the front-wheel drive class record. What’s more it seemed to be an apt flipping of the bird to VW for having the impertinence to try and outdo them last year.

Here, Ryuichi Kijima talks you through the differences between the 2015 and 2017 Honda Civic Type R and what was key to beating the track record:

 

It goes without say that all of these lap times are impressive, showing just how much cars continuously improve with each year that passes. We’re also now even more excited to get our hands on the new Civic Type R when it’s released later this year.