Here is my two cents about what I know from direct experiences and clearly from my personal point of view.
I have quite an history about special cars (Kadett 16V, Celica GT-Four ST205, Impreza Solberg, Nissan GT-R, Focus RS, some days with a CTR, Fiesta ST and GRY among the many), but always living on a budget, that meaning that luckily I never felt the urge to buy something very expensive (that I could not afford), but I mostly liked the pleasure of driving, and the chance to daily use my car.
Spoiler alert: the GRY wins hands down among these all these cars, in my opinion, and by quite far.
What I feel once I drive this car is that it has no competitor at all, and it stands in a niche of its own.
It makes no sense making comparisons based upon price and specs with other cars because the main difference with the others is that it has been built for a different use than ordinary cars.
It's like a Porsche GT3 in my opinion, they are on another league, and no other car can give you that "special" feeling that stamps a long-time smile on your face once you turn it on, and it stays for very long even after you turned it off.
This never happened to me in this apparent way with every other car I had, and this in my opinion has no price at all.
And this is really dangerous to my wallet, because for having something like a GRY I'd be able to ruin my finances forever.
I'd buy it even if I were living in France, to say it all.
How to explain the "special feeling"?
It's not easy, but maybe it's the way this car has every thing oversized for its use, like brakes, the engine power, the overall lightness, the agility, the quickness with answering drivers inputs, the sensation that if you use it properly it will do every thing you ask it to do, and exactly in the way you need it to do.
Maybe in a single sentence is the total trust between the car and the driver that you reach very quickly. I never tasted something like this in any other car I had.
So it has no price to me, and when I start reading comparisons with other cars, I lose my focus immediately on what I'm reading.
One few words abut the CTR, and generally about 2WD cars.
I had many of them, the last one being my fantastic Fiesta ST3 Mk8.
I can't stand car magazines anytime they declare "the best ever hot hatch" by judging cars only in ideal weather conditions (that we find for very limited time within our life with a car) or worst on perfectly dry tracks.
I really started enjoying my sports car once I bought my first AWD car, because I finally stopped having my usual dose of freaking annoyances (wheels skidding and clutch management) and even scares anytime the weather or the road conditions were not perfectly neat.
We don't live in a perfect world, and a sports car has to be judged in the mixed conditions it will face in real life.
I saw too many tests of CTR, describing it as the best hot hatch even for any possible future, after driving it only on a neat and dry tracks.
I drove one CTR for some days, courtesy of one friend of mine, and while it's sure fantastic on dry perfect tarmac, and better than the GRY of course, but once the road is a bit humid, or worse, the usual nightmares come to life, and all its great performance is almost destroyed by managing the car in an adverse environment.
Clearly this doesn't happen with a GRY, where you can enjoy your car for most of weather conditions, and sometimes the bad weather gives you the best chances to have fun.
For these reasons, a CTR will never be the best hot hatch (or sports car) to me, and for these same reasons, I'm starting caressing the idea of replacing my beloved Fiesta ST with an auto-GRY, someday... Hope my dear Fiesta is not listening right now!
