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Merc A45 AMG v Audi S3 v BMW M1351 - Mercedes Powers Its Way To Pole (Part 1)

9/8/2013 9:31:07 PM
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When Mercedes do hot hatch, they don’t mess about. 360 PS? Audi and BMW are old hands at this, but can they live with the rabid A45 AMG?

It felt like yesterday: same roads, same routes, same silly speeds. We used to be driving ourselves dizzy up here in trick Mitsubishi Lancer Evos and Subaru Imprezas on steroids, relatively affordable fast cars that loomed large inside our heads and on our bedroom walls. Ten years on, however, the once untouchable four-door Japanese bat-mobiles are about as en vogue as a Nokia 3110 mobile phone or Rio MP3 player. Instead, the compact crackerjacks most petrol-heads embrace in 2013 still can be had with four doors, four-wheel-drive and turbocharged four-cylinder engines, but they are no longer street-legal derivatives of rally-bred icons made in the Far East.

Merc A45 AMG front

Merc A45 AMG front

It’s Deutschland über Alles these days, premium eclipsing mainstream, Freude durch Kraft dressed up in more socially acceptable formats. Offering a similar mix of exciting dynamics, engineering excellence and fire-breathing performance, the latest masters of the super-GTI segment are the 300-PS Audi S3, the 320-PS BMW M135i and the new (and utterly rampant) 360-PS Mercedes A45 AMG. Gentlemen, start your engines for a two-day, no-holds-barred shootout on the Dolomites’ finest tire-shredding, brake-eating turf.

Normally in June, all passes connecting Italy to Austria and Switzerland are open, but since this spring is an autumn which has been pulled forward, evidently erasing summer in the process, we had virtually the entire Alps to ourselves. Wherever a sign read ‘Road closed due to snow’, there was 25-30 kilometers of virtually traffic-free dream territory lying ahead. Add to this a felt 80 kilometers of visibility and you’re on the threshold of driver’s paradise. It’s the perfect place to showcase just how much the hot hatch has changed: in 1976 the first VW Golf GTI had 110 PS, the new Mk7 GTI has 220 PS; but now this mad AMG Merc has 360 PS.

Audi S3 front

Audi S3 front

To turn this torque punch into a mighty kick in the butt, Mercedes have mated its reinforced seven-speed twin-clutch transmission to an aggressively tuned 4Matic driveline. The software of the Speedshift ’box is borrowed from the SLS AMG GT, which is why the sportiest A-Class features a computer-generated heel-and-toe downshift action, a Racestart function and, in ‘Manual’ and ‘Sport’ settings, the same ultra-quick shifts as the flagship gull-wing supercar. In C (for Controlled Efficiency), Friends of the Earth may relish start/stop and super-smooth gear changes at low revs. In S, the same process is repeated at a brisker pace. In M, you play the paddle piano, so don’t expect the black box to help out when the needle of the rev counter suddenly hits its 6,250-RPM limit. But the transmission will not accept early downshift orders. It will only shift down when it reckons that the revolutions are evenly matched, which definitely takes too long on the fast approach to a slow bend. It’s a fault that afflicts every AMG, from A45 to SLS, to varying degrees.

Did the SLS-inspired A45 AMG convince us with a rapid-fire throttle response? Yes and no. In combination with the new sports exhaust (with a continuously adjustable flap pinched from the SLK55 AMG) the twin-scroll turbo (which runs at a high 1.8 bar) swings the whip hard and early and when you’re deep in the rev range there’s no issue with throttle response. But it’s the ’box which can undermine this effort by sometimes pre-selecting the wrong ratio, by taking a little too long to make up its electronic mind now and then and by occasionally triggering a counter-productive upshift. A software issue, perhaps, but one that needs addressing.

BMW M1351 front

BMW M1351 front

On a different front, the AMG computer chips do a splendid job relaying a hackle-raising sensation of speed. By momentarily retarding ignition and injection, they make lead-footed all-out upshifts bark as angrily as the SLS’ V8, they voice an angry blat-blat during downshifts and they telegraph a catchy cocktail of ’charger whine and waste-gate whistle into the cabin. It’s artificial, but rather nice. And there’s bite to match the bark: with Racestart active, this 1,480-kg A-Class will howl in 4.6 seconds from 0 to 100 km/h, officially return around 14.16 km/liter and if you spend a small fortune on the AMG Driver’s Pack, the top speed rises from 250 to 272 km/h, which almost equals the engine’s cut-out speed. It doesn’t feel as manically fast as the most extreme Evos and Scoobys of old or gap the Audi and BMW with quite the ease you’d expect, but there’s no doubting the punch of that little four-pot.

The engine delivers quantifiable extra urge with real authority, the steering fuses input and feedback to a wonderfully three-dimensional level of control, the four-wheel drive distributes torque with the eerie professionalism of a poker ace dealing his rounds and the brakes bite with vigor and determination until, at the foot of the pass, smoke signals beg for mercy. The A45 AMG is as checkable as it is sure-footed. It can corner on three wheels, decelerate at a ridiculous yaw angle and put the power down even earlier than the Audi.

 
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