Audi RS3 Sportback
Audi's newly updated mega hatch is outlandish and offers stonking performance for the price
There’s an admirable belligerence about the Audi RS3. It hasn’t been made a crime just yet, after all, to put a big engine into something relatively small and create an amusingly alternative driver’s car in the process, much as a great many of Europe’s CO2-based taxation regimes would already suggest it ought to be.It really would be an aberration, though, if Audi’s excellent EA855 five-cylinder performance engine, motivator of the likes of the Audi TT RS and RS Q3 and winner of more International Engine of the Year awards (yes, they do exist) than you can shake a golden crankshaft at, were taken from us any earlier than were absolutely necessary.Hot hatchbacks like this used to be a little more common, but the RS3 has become the last of that over-engined breed, with motors significantly bigger, more powerful and more mechanically exotic than you expect to find in any humble five-door and something of the aura of the custom-built, engine-swapped hot rod about them.The Mercedes-AMG A45 is just as outrageous, but it's powered by merely four cylinders. The Volkswagen Golf R is a more subtle alternative, while the Toyota GR Yaris is smaller and perhaps a bit more fun.But the RS3 is somehow mechanically bigger and bolder than its rivals. Which could explain why that engine, with its 394bhp output and 369lb ft whack of torque, was left untouched for the mid-life update that has just arrived.In fact, glance at the technical specification of this facelifted RS3 and you might wonder whether the mechanical bits have even been touched: the top speed and 0-62mph time remain unchanged too.But while you can easily glen the styling changes, this isn't one of those facelifts that’s all style and no substance. It's just the technical work has all been detail stuff, refining the car's complex hardware and software.It's easier to understand by starting with the outcome: a new compact class Nürburgring lap record of 7min 33.123sec, which is, most pertinently, more than 7sec quicker than the pre-facelift RS3’s best time. And, Audi is at pains to point out, that improvement came from work on the car rather than Frank Stippler simply having a good day.
