What it cannot do is ride well, period.
Even on smooth blacktop it is patently obvious that eiderdowns were not on the
shopping list. Worse, this is on relatively smooth roads in mainland Europe,
yet our long-term A-Class diesel already struggles on broken British Tarmac.
And unless you’ve got a crush on your osteopath, stay away from the optional
AMG Performance suspension, which features even tauter spring and damper
tuning. We’d like more weight from the steering wheel during fast cornering
too, and matt pewter paint aside, for the A45 to look less like any other
A-Class with the optional AMG body-kit.
The rivals? As luck would have it, not all
cars arrived in the required specification, which resulted in the widest
possible variety of drivetrain and suspension options. Our S3 was one of the
few specimens not fitted with the desirable dual-clutch S-tronic transmission.
The manual shifter works well – short throws, positive action, pragmatically
spaced gears – but at 5.2 seconds to 100 km/h it loses four-tenths to the
paddle-shift, equivalent simply by taking more time to pass on the slices of
the nicely stacked torque cake. At 380 Nm, the turbocharged 2.0-liter unit is
not quite as well-endowed as its rivals’ and yet it rolls out the dough all the
way from 1,800 to 5,500 revolutions per minute.
Merc
A45 AMG side
WRX STI and Evo IX ran turbochargers the
size of an infant’s head, causing serious throttle lag followed by even more
serious forward thrust. In the wake of these two wild, winged warriors, the motor
industry has learned a lot about the art of turbo-charging, virtually
eliminating delay to throttle orders in the process. At least, that’s what we
thought before setting off on the trails of Hannibal in these highly tuned
triplets. No more turbo lag? Hop into the S3 and the ancient vice is back,
large as life and annoying. The extra-cost S-tronic may to an extent cushion
the effect, but in the manual version one must change down early to keep at
least the bottom two LEDs of the boost gauge lit most of the time.
Which is a shame, because after the delay
there is always enough oomph on tap to zoom the car towards the next apex. It
takes an adjustment in attitude and timing to step on the gas earlier so that
little momentum is lost when Snow White is propelling herself on to the next
straight. Perhaps, this occasionally blurred communication between accelerator
and engine control is partly due to the fact that the 2.0 TFSI unit blends
direct injection (at low and high loads) with indirect injection (at part loads).
Audi
S3 side
After the A45 the throttle response feels
lax and the brakes bite more sharply, but without the AMG’s potency, but at
ten-tenths pace the S3 is so easy to drive. The M135i will want to under-steer
into a corner and over-steer at the exit, but the Audi goes round bends like a
slot racer with a second pin between the rear wheels. Neutrality is the name of
its game. Boring? Wrong term. The S3 rewards its driver with a different
pot-pourri of talents. The road-holding is so tenacious and although the
steering is overly light and a little mum (no matter how you set the weighting
via the Drive Select menu) it none the less turns, honing the line into a
surprisingly entertaining pastime. Plus the easy-to-modulate brakes are strong
enough to push the point of no return way past the apex and thanks to these
super-sharp anchors, the reassuring tire grip, the low kern weight and a
guardian angel named Quattro, the 300-PS S3 can stay in touch with its 320-PS
and 360-PS challengers. Up to a point. Eventually, the gap will widen and the
Audi will drop back, yet still gracefully maintain its composure. Especially at
a 10/10 pace, the S3 is even easier to drive than the BMW.
BMW
M1351 side
Which, in turn, feels significantly softer
edged than the now-defunct 340-PS 1 Series M Coupé. That little bruiser, mixing
the M3’s suspension and brakes with a squat chassis, manual gearbox and punchy
turbo engine, was a riotous experience, but the M135i is different. Believe it
or not, but the high-end 1 Series makes the charismatic 1M Coupé pale in more
ways than one. How come? Because this half-breed M car is benign instead of
brutal, cosseting instead of crash-bang hard, relaxed instead of highly strung,
easily accessible instead of radically focused.
Through the countless hairpins, up steep
slopes and on a very mixed bag of winding roads, the absence of driven front
wheels and a limited-slip differential looked at the beginning of our drive
like a deciding dynamic deficiency of the BMW – but we were wrong. Thanks to
its good dynamic weight distribution, the chip-controlled traction management
and those fine composed-to-order Michelin Pilot Supersport tires, the semi-M
car rarely put a foot wrong.
