For a long time, if you wanted a fast but small saloon car you turned to Audi. The RS3 has been one of the best small performance cars for a very long time, it's especially good in it's most current form. But another German giant has joined the party of small performance saloons. Mercedes-AMG.
The new A35 AMG saloon has been revealed after the "very successful launch of the hatchback models" (says Tobias Moers, CEO of Mercedes-AMG) which has gotten a lot of people really rather excited and I can't blame them. It seems to boast some pretty impressive stats and looks incredibly good but I think, as is becoming tradition, we should analyse the competition first.
So the main car that faces off against the new Mercedes-AMG A35 Saloon (that's quite a handful!) is the Audi RS3 Saloon. Said Audi has a classic 2.5L 5-cylinder turbocharged engine which produces 395bhp and 479nm torque. Those engine specs give it the power to hit 62mph in 4.1 seconds and it goes on to a top speed of 174mph. That's very impressive from a small family saloon in my opinion, obviously that 0-62 sprint is helped by Audi's famous Quattro AWD system. You can get all this performance from £47,000!
But now it's time to check out the Mercedes. It shares the smaller, 2.0L 4-cylinder turbocharged engine as the A35 hatch. This gives you access to 302bhp and 400nm torque which is certainly down on power when compared to the Audi. However, this still gives it a 0-62 sprint time of 4.7 seconds which, for being 93bhp down on the Audi, is still very impressive! This gets put to the floor via Mercede's 4Matic AWD system which again helps with that 0-62 time. The more impressive part though is the price, for the incredible looks of the A35 and still surprisingly fast performance you 'only' have to pay £35,580! A whopping £11,420 less than the Audi which could potentially attract a lot of new buyers to the new A35 saloon.
So the real question is, would you buy an RS3 Saloon or an A35 AMG Saloon?
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