Let's not muck about here.
We've already driven the Audi RS3
and discovered it to be, if not a scintillating drive, then certainly a more-than-pleasant performance car.
But this is now a post-1-series M world we live in and, in light of the appearance of what in some ways is the RS3's closest conceptual rival, it is perhaps worth revisiting Audi's latest RS model.
This is also the first opportunity we've had to sample the RS3 in proper-hand drive, an activity which often throws up new and interesting angles on a car.
All of which is well and good, but it is odd that Audi has decided to launch its UK-spec RS3 in, er, Austria. But although the area in which we are to sample the RHD RS3 has no more apparent association with the VW Group than the massive VW enthusiast show that takes place on the shores of Lake Worthersee every year (and at which Audi recently unveiled a 500bhp A1 concept), there is method in the Ingolstadt madness.
Because just a few tens of kilometres away from Worthersee lies an Alpine pass called Turracher Hohe. This is a stretch of steep, twisting, ill-cambered asphalt upon which, in 1978 a little bit of history took place.
It was here that a strange four-wheel-drive development prototype was presented before the Audi board. On a road covered in snow, the car managed to negotiate the Turracher pass (which includes 23 per cent gradients). On road tyres. Thus the ur Quattro was green-lit, with 400 units the predicted production volume. By the time the Quattro went off sale in 1990, more than 11,000 had been sold.
More than 30 years on, and four-wheel drive is still the lynchpin of Audi's performance offerings. So Audi is returning to Turracher Hohe, but this time with the RS3 Sportback, the latest torch-carrier of Quattro ideology.
Okay, so the engine is east-west and the transmission a Haldex clutch jobbie, but the RS3 does at least get a turbocharged five-cylinder engine, and its DSG twin-clutch transmission can (arguably) trace its roots to the PDK transmission that some of the original Quattro rally cars used, so perhaps the comparison is justified.
The RS3's utterly tenacious grip certainly reminds you that this car means business. This part of the world offers some fairly spectacular drops should things go wrong, so it's no small mercy that the brakes (370mm discs, no less) and grip are so darn strong.
As for the RHD side of things, well, the RS3 seems to have swapped its wheel to the other side with no discernable effects...
Meanwhile, that five-cylinder warble is suitably characterful and undeniably rapid but, and it seems churlish to say this of a car able to whip to 124mph in 17.5secs (and 0-62mph in 4.6secs) and possessed of 331lb ft of torque between 1600rpm and 5300rpm, there is just a hint of flatness in the power delivery.
Admittedly that's probably because of the immaculately linear engine, and it's only compared with the spikily forceful power delivery in the BMW 1M. And since that's something we criticised in the BMW it ought to be a good thing that the Audi offers such flat shove, but it does make the RS3 that little bit less exhilarating.
And that's really what marks the RS3 apart from the 1M. It's practical, almost sensible, both in its packaging and its on-road behaviour. If that's for you and you simply want a device in which to travel darn quickly from A to B that is also more than reasonably practical then the RS3 is an unarguably brilliant device. But if you want the
th degree of involvement, that intangible edge of excitement that makes a car more than merely fast, an RS3 just isn't going to deliver that.
Still, for 99 per cent of the time the RS3 is a thoroughly excellent car, and there's obviously more than enough people out there for whom the RS3 holds sufficient appeal, because 500 people have already bought one, meaning the car's UK allocation has sold out. And we can well understand why.
