Boardroom brawl

One of performance motoring's favourite inter-brand battles is back. But step aside, Merc C63 and BMW M3, it's time for the middleweights to spar

A part from trawling through the comments sections below classic eighties songs on YouTube, there are few more tragically nostalgic moments than scouring decade-old automotive publications for period-specific prices.

At launch in 2014, the box-fresh F80 BMW M3 barely scraped in over R1 million. Today the current-gen G80 equivalent costs double that. This means that for all but those holding C-suite job titles, the German super-saloon has become wholly dearer and entirely out of reach for the average South African consumer.

The automotive world, however, has since also become a far more evolved - if complicated place. Acolytes of speed have been blessed with continually upward-creeping kilowatt counts, while on the other hand, they'd be less pleased with the recent trend towards all-wheel drive in performance cars not sporting a quattro badge. Furthermore, the prevalence of electrification within internal combustion power trains, aimed at improved efficiencies (with, admittedly, added performance, too) has divided opinion.

And so the second-in-command BMW M340i xDrive and Mercedes-AMG C43 4Matic, beneficiaries of these advances, are called to their roles as next fastest in their respective ranges, akin to Bayern Munich versus Borussia Dortmund in terms of intensity - Germany's greatest automotive rivalry is about to re-erupt.

Too much of a good thing?
MERCEDES-AMG C43 4MATIC

Price: R1 538 591
0–100 km/h: 4,64 seconds
Top speed: 250 km/h
Power: 300 kW
Torque: 500 N.m
CAR fuel index: 10,68 L/100 km
CO2: 206 g/km