Quick, fun, practical and four-wheel-drive? Audi’s new RS Q3
isn’t quite the niche-buster it might appear…
A list. Buying a car should always start with a list of
things you need it to do, way, way ahead of a list of things you want it to be.
Some things will be more important than others, obviously. Those of us with a
mob of children would find it inconvenient to have to strap toddlers to a
luggage carrier on the back of a two-seat roadster, and the RSPCA gets animated
if you lob a Great Dane in a top box, even if you drill air holes. So start
with the basics. Budget, obviously. Insurance, certainly. But it takes a bit
more than that these days, given the number of cars on offer. Oh sure, you can
set yourself a maximum, graze eBay and buy a Ferrari for 20 grand, but you’ll
end up with a pretty ornament for the drive, bijou oil puddles and likely a
thick sheaf of papers from a divorce lawyer. Real life gets in the way.
BMW 330d Touring xDrive:
the least obvious of the bunch, but fast
Which brings us here.A healthy 40ish grand to spend on a
practical car. It needs to be a five-seater, rapid but not flash, entertaining
and capable of handling some bad weather in confidence, so all-wheel-drive. We
live in the UK, and may as well be honest about it. Which throws up a decent
set of options.
First, and most obviously, you could go down the
tried-and-tested route and buy a BMW 330d Touring. Safe bet, bases well and
truly covered. And these days, a mere $3,200 extra – the price of an upgraded
stereo/nav or wheel option – gets you the xDrive AWD version, for a total just
under $64k. A good baseline, this: 0–62mph in around five and a half seconds,
and the kind of real-world punch from that straight-six, 3.0-liter turbodiesel
and eight-speed auto that makes overtaking a cinch. It might have ‘only’
258bhp, but a whopping 413lb ft of torque can make up for a decent herd of
noisy horses.
A45 AMG feels like
a well-sorted FWD. Until it gets slippy
But the BMW is the kind of safe bet you see on lots of other
people’s driveways, and the only way that you can tell it’s the
four-wheel-drive variant is a discreet ‘xDrive’ badge on the boot. It’s also a
diesel, so the mid-fifties miles per gallon comes at the expense of any real
aural accompaniment, unless a muted, rough-throated thrum is your thing. So,
what about something a bit more obviously fun? Well, the Mercedes-Benz A45 AMG
fits the bill almost to a tee: about 38 grand (though you can option these
through the roof – the one we have here hovers around the $80k mark), five
seats, a hatchback boot, drive to all four wheels. It also comes with the
world’s most powerful production 2.0-liter, four-cylinder engine, and nobody
can argue with 355bhp from 1,991cc, even if it does require a hefty turbo.
Quick too, posting a 0–62mph time of just 4.6 seconds, making lots of delicious
Group B-ish noises as it does so. And it has launch control. Which is always
cool.
Audi sounds great
but is too stiff for British B-roads
But there’s a problem. The trouble with the A45 and the 330d
is that they sit at opposite poles of the world we’ve created for ourselves.
Which is where the Audi comes in. For those of you unfamiliar with the RS Q3,
it’s a sportified, mid-sized SUV. So AWD, with a 305bhp five-cylinder turbo
petrol engine up front, enough for 62mph from rest in five and a half seconds.
Think now-defunct RS3 or TT RS with a suspension lift. As with all the others,
it has five seats and practical space, though weighs in as the most expensive
in terms of basic price: $68,800 without options. So which is best? Time to
find some inclement weather and decent roads to find out.Which at this time of
year means heading west… quite a long way west.
A couple of hundred miles later, and mid Wales in October is
bathed in unseasonably glorious sunshine. Typical. But before I can get my
teeth into a decent-weather rant, a cloud tumbles over the valley like a
homicidal duvet and brings 60mph winds and heat-seeking rain. Twelve minutes later,
sunshine. Then rain. Then sun. Repeat at irregular intervals until even the
sheep look confused and grumpy. Personally, a total git; for the purposes of
this test, perfect.
