It’s not as visceral as something like the Merc - despite being the same power and also AWD - but the fact that it feels like it’s more on your side makes it just as quick. It’s certainly not slower though - and especially not on a bouncy b-road - this is probably as fast an A to B point car down an unknown road as you’re likely to get short of something with rally stickers and a ‘cage. Where the Merc is angry and pointy and hard, the Audi is more cultured, better damped and much less aggressive. So is this the best megahatch on the market? Well, the main competition comes from the Mercedes-AMG A45 S, a similarly-speedy, similarly-priced 400-ish bhp AWD hatchback. A really good car on the right kind of wrong road.
PERFECTIT 3 REVIEW DRIVER
And while it searches for perfection, what the RS3 does is put the onus on the driver to pick the right combination. Layers upon layers of individualisation, for every different surface, road and need. There’s a deeply impressive car here, buried under a landslide of data, adjustability, and the choice that it brings with it. There’s an interesting thing going on here, in that initially, the RS3 felt a little bit all over the place. Weirdly, the Sportback hatch feels a bit keener on the twisty stuff, and the saloon a tad better at high speed stability, but that could be simply preconception - it’s the same gear underneath. On very slick roads the car can feel a little bit too front-wheel drive if we’re being picky - probably the safest option, to be honest - but once you start to trust the car and give it more aggressive inputs, it becomes remarkably neutral. If the tyres are in contact with the floor, they’re working, and they work hard for the RS3. You don’t get knocked off line, the steering is very accurate - if not the most conversational of systems - and nothing skips. But the best bit is the damping, because it makes all the systems feel remarkably natural - on a bumpy, unknown b-road, this would be the car to have. The engine warbles away, grip is consistent and strong, body control just the right side of telling you what’s going on without leaning. Even though such fine tuning is a bit of a faff, you can set up the relevant ‘individual’ mode so that you just double-press the ‘RS’ button on the right-hand side of the steering wheel to access it (first press gets you the ‘RS Performance’ mode), and from then on in, it’s as you like it.ĭo that, with the correct set up, and the RS3 is deeply impressive. And yes, while this offers a good deal of personal fine-tuning, it’s also a bit annoying initially. After that, the ‘RS Individual’ mode allows a triplet of adjustments to the drive system, suspension - where ‘comfortable’ is a long-legged performance setting different to ‘comfort’ - steering, engine sound, and stability control intervention thresholds. As an example, the Audi Drive Select now features seven different settings (auto, comfort, dynamic, efficiency, RS individual, RS performance and RS torque rear). Sounds like there’s a lot of stuff going on there?Īnd you’d be right. Still not sure whether that’s genius or utterly appalling. Oh, and configurable lights on some models (LEDs are standard) that can spell out ‘R… S… 3’ and then a chequered flag in 8-bit when you approach the car. There are optional ceramic brakes (which save 10kg), an optional RS exhaust - standard on some models - and a new mVDC (vehicle dynamics controller) which should allow for better/faster integration of the chassis systems.
PERFECTIT 3 REVIEW PLUS
All cars in the UK get adaptive damping, plus what Audi calls the ‘RS torque splitter’ to distribute a maximum of 50 per cent of available torque between the two rear wheels. The big news is some of the other changes that really make a difference. The car itself is marginally longer, wider and taller than the previous RS3 Sportback, but with the same wheelbase, and comes equipped with less luggage space (by about 50-litres). There are bigger intakes, wider tracks and impressively boxy arches. At first, it looks like a bit of a massage - no more power (394bhp), slightly more torque (369lb ft) - with both more accessible than before, but that might be to sell the new version somewhat short, so more on that in a minute. The same general ingredients which involve the excellent use of a 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine driving through quattro all-wheel drive. This is the third generation of Audi’s RS3 megahatch, and the second-generation of the saloon variant (which incidentally holds the Nürburgring record for compact cars, if that floats your boat).