Small Hatches With Huge Numbers

Audi Sport and Mercedes-AMG play a game of Top Trumps with their most powerful pocket rockets.

- Dr Kong Yongyao

DEAR neighbour, I apologise for waking you up at 6am. I had to go to work, as usual, but this time I drove one of the most antisocial hatchbacks ever made, Mercedes’ freshly updated AMG A45.

Not that it hasn’t earned the right to shout. No sooner had Audi’s RS3 ascended the podium as the world’s most powerful hatchback, AMG’s renewed A45 arrived with 381bhp and 475Nm to flick the Audi down a notch. This it achieves with a violently turbocharged 4-cylinder engine, against Audi’s unique 5-cylinder producing 367bhp and 465Nm.

Another technical distinction worth noting is the RS3’s centre differential, which has the ability to route 100 percent of torque to the rear wheels, whereas the A45 makes do with a maximum torque diversion of 50 percent.

Otherwise, these four-wheel drive monster hatches are very similar in mechanical concept and, therefore, ripe for a nose thumbing game of Top Trumps.

Audi’s RS3 looks purposeful and handsome, like all A3s do. Next to the A45, however, it is a paragon of restraint, apart from the unusual orange paintwork of our test car.

To my eyes, the A45 looks like an angry puppy. The little, yipping type that will never shut up. I don’t mean that in a bad way, for in the A45’s wedge shaped, shoe-like silhouette and squat stance lies the suggestion of energy bubbling over, waiting to be unwound.

The AMG straddles the line between cuteness, with its myriad “Hot Wheels” aero appendages, and teeth-baring ferocity. Even the casual observer will have absolutely no trouble telling that this is not your garden-variety A180.

Expect a similarly aggressive atmosphere inside the Mercedes and you’ll not be disappointed.