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Audi RS3: Brain Shaker
AUDI RS3
BRAIN SHAKER
Words by Alessandro Marrone
Photos by Jay Tomei
Without even realizing it you will have taken out a couple of tanks, collected a stack of speeding fines and lost five years of life, but damn it will have been worth it
Take two abundant forms of butter, a kilo of flour, half a dozen eggs (still to be shucked) and meticulously place everything in the trunk. Before leaving the supermarket car park, remember to close the tailgate, this is really important. Engage Dynamic mode and throw yourself into the stomach of one of those roads that will truly attack your heartbeat. The eyes remain fixed on the asphalt snake that in an almost grotesque way twists on itself, between ups and downs and blind hairpins, faster stretches and moments in which I have to put the brakes to the test. Meanwhile, the RS3 does not prove to be only the fastest and most effective hardcore blender, but a hatchback capable of reaching bizarre figures to say the least, vulgar I would dare to say, effortlessly intimidating traditional supercars that cost at least three times as much.
It all started with the grocery store parking lot, an area where each of us finds ourselves several times a month. Put that you have finished your Nutella reserve, or that you need to buy the smartphone cables that usually vanish into some black hole – they always disappear like this – sooner or later you will have to go to the grocery right?! Doing it with a Lambo is never comfortable and not so much for the reduced luggage compartment, but because you would be in the middle of many looks and it will be inevitable to have to leave the coin in the shopping cart as a tip. The RS3 is designed precisely to meet these needs – so to speak – because you can park it between the usual and boring grey city cars and no one will notice you. It is logical to assume that you will not have to leave any tips at the carts collection. And here we go back to the topic we started at the beginning of the article, because once we get out of the purest everyday life and the typical demands, the 5-cylinder TFSI will be like an on/off switch, which will start the sensory ignition of four rings’ angriest hot-hatch.
In Ingolstadt they know very well what it takes to make good cars that keep the qualities useful to everyday life intact, still shoving 400 horses under the hood makes you think that for creating an A3 like this you really need some imagination come out of your mind. Easily confused with a standard S-Line, the RS3 Sportback is capable of throwing into oblivion every bit of common sense left inside you, its 2.5 cc is a small work of art that does not wait to be raped in Dynamic mode, with dual clutch gearbox, steering and suspension sharpened and made permanently ready to put on fire any road you decide to attack. The QUATTRO four-wheel drive is endless and allows you to unleash the power of the 5 cylinders to the ground at any time, without caring about the imperfections of the road surface below you. The slight understeer is not so much due to what instead turns out to be a precise marriage between chassis and suspension, but rather to the shameful power delivered in any gear, with a peak torque of 480 Nm already available at just 1,700 rpm. You have to have a good grip on the steering wheel, because in a blink of an eye you are already at the end of any straight line and soon you realize that the car/driver communication leads you to increase corner’s entry minute by minute.
Curves, I’m talking to you, that yardstick that divides fast cars from truly effective cars. The RS3 stops the scale at around a ton and a half, has five doors, five seats, traction on both axles and a 7-speed automatic transmission. At full load and with your overweight uncles on board you can even touch two tons, but you will still be very fast. Fortunately, I only have the photographer with me and I don’t dare to think about the health of the shopping bags placed in the trunk. I don’t care, or rather, I don’t have time to think about it because I’m too busy trying to stay alive. The RS3 squirts from one curve to another like a kangaroo bitten by a tarantula, you can feel the nose sink the moment you throw it into the slower corners and in the same way you can physically perceive the immense effort that the tires make when you stretch the right foot on the gas and the tachometer needle begins its mad run towards the red line. The virtual cockpit is phenomenal and allows you to put the navigation map in full screen, but driving like a hooligan is better to have the digital tachometer in the middle of the 12.3-inch display and let the passenger take charge of peeking at the road ahead through the 7-inch retractable display, in the middle of the dashboard. There is no room for stylistic charms, except for the beautiful and very comfortable seats in perforated leather and with rhomboid seams, everything is extremely ergonomic and reduced to the minimum, with a clean and linear dashboard, just like that of a quiet A3. Except for the RS badges and the sports shift lever, through which you can call up the gears in sequential mode, or act directly on the paddles on the steering wheel, everything will be familiar to the driver of the German hatchback, but this is not a defect, but the umpteenth proof that there is no need for exaggerated aerodynamic appendices or eccentric solutions to create a Lambo some serious troubles.
It would be too easy to glorify the RS3 for its engine and for those 400 horses ready to make you pale every time you need to refresh your memory about its performance. The area in which the car really excels is precisely its dynamic side, with an astonishing attitude to say the least, where in Dynamic mode the driving torque is distributed mainly on the rear axle, to the advantage of a more immediate and precise steering. Here, this is perhaps the point where the RS3 manages to surprise the most, you feel it in the most abrupt movements, at the most reduced speeds, even if in this second case for different reasons. The steering is so precise that if you mount a brush on the lip of the front bumper, you could paint the Mona Lisa on the asphalt, without even doing too much effort. In the end we still return to that raw sentimentalism that we experience towards pure speed, with a 0-100 kph of just 4.1 seconds and a maximum speed limited to 250 per hour. To allow us to safely exploit these figures we have at our disposal a very powerful braking system, equipped with 370 mm carbon-ceramic discs at the front, never intrusive not even in the city environment.
The S-Tronic gearbox continues to fire through the gears and I feel that my hands are now one with the part of the steering wheel upholstered in Alcantara. The two big oval mouths of the exhaust at the back spit out all their anger and I think at when we complain about modern cars saying that nobody thinks about fun and then, as punctually as taxes and death, here comes the usual phrase “There are no more car as it used to be ”. Probably those who still say this have never jumped on an RS3, because this shrink is addictive, it turns your bowels upside down and reminds you of what you ate for dinner three weeks ago. I try to explain myself better, every single bolt is where it should be, the madness is here but it’s the one you cannot see. The moment you enter in tune with it and you have milled enough kilometers to get away from every sign of civilization, then that’s where you’ll be able to whip up a small sports car that has gone too far with testosterone. Without even realizing it you will have taken out a couple of tanks, collected a stack of speeding fines and lost five years of life, but damn it will have been worth it. It’s one of those cars that put you in trouble, because you can’t stay away from it and you end up whispering stupid little words and declaring your love after a few appointments. Besides, it asks for confidence giving you the security that will be the right choice even when you want to start a family and bring some children to the world.
The scarce vegetation along the road along the Passo del Turchino is a wedding invitation and I decide to exclude the ESC, in order to make the RS3 even freer and to be able to fully understand what it is made of. Everything proceeds according to plan, with the small blue rocket that keeps creeping in between the corners with a nonchalance that would dwarf a bullet that makes its way into a giant form of butter. The lower back communicates every change of direction, every slightest adjustment of the weights, always keeping constant a sort of magnetism with the road underneath, the real reason why you can feel so calm despite the brain begins to feel like a flipper ball in the middle of a big match. But if you were starting to think that the RS3 is perfect, a big “but” is falling on these beliefs. Its main drawback lies in its overflowing qualities, do not take me for crazy and let me explain better. The fact of being so damned performing and allowing to be squeezed like a lemon with disarming simplicity is the opposite side of the coin. If on one hand its effectiveness is able to guarantee greater safety – provided that 400 horses pulled by the neck are a situation that can be combined with this word – on the other hand it also helps to reduce that gap between different types of drivers. Put it this way, even your grandmother could crunch a mountain road and make fun of the most aggressive weekend bikers and this is not politically correct, so you have to ask yourself if you really care about this?
The price too is not a friend of any common mortal, there’s a long list of options which have to be paid and for a gifted model like the one of our test, don’t think to get away easily. We’re talking about at least 55 thousand Euro, but not even the time to blink and you’ll be on even more important figures. You will justify the expense to your wife or girlfriend by claiming that an RS3 is like an engagement ring, you never take it off and – at least – it will look good in any circumstances. Still, if she doesn’t believe you, open the trunk and show that while coming back home from the supermarket, you have also prepared dinner. Sort of.
AUDI RS3 SPORTBACK
Layout – front-engined, all-wheel-drive
Engine – 5 cylinder – 2.480 cc – turbo
Transmission – 7-speed automatic gearbox
Power – 400 hp @ 5.850-7.000 rpm
480 Nm @ 1.700-5.850 rpm
Weight – 1.510 kg
Acceleration – 4,1 sec.
Top Speed – 250 kph
Price – from € 55.400
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