Rather a lot of sacred cows have been slaughtered at the altar of ‘progress’ in the last 12 months. The
manual GT3
Renaultsport Clio
has got sensible. And Caterham’s attempted to
modernise the Seven
How far has AMG come in 20 years? Quite far...
And AMG has turned its back on its roots and built a
four-cylinder hot hatch
For red-blooded fans of German heavy metal this last one is particularly troubling. AMGs – the proper ones – have traditionally been about outrageous V8s levered into otherwise sensible Mercs, top speed uber alles performance and need-to-know bling to separate them from the trim level wannabes with logo’d floormats in their C180s.
As a bit of an old-school AMG fan I raised these concerns with development boss (as was, now overall head) Tobias Moers at the Geneva show. As previously discussed, Moers is about as old-school AMG as it gets. “Tell me what you think when you’ve driven it!” was his parting shot. And now I have.
Credit due. I think it’s a bit of a blinder.
You almost expect chunks of tarmac out the back
The more so because it defiantly ignores all that AMG fans hold dear and completely flips what we have come to expect from the brand on its head. It could have been a complete disaster.
It’s not because AMG has picked its battles carefully. The basis of a front-driven hatch with a dual-clutch auto and transversely mounted four-cylinder engine wasn’t going to change. This couldn’t be a traditional AMG with a big V8 and rear-wheel drive. But I like the fact that within this completely different context they’ve shrugged and said, “OK, can’t have big capacity but we’ll keep the bonkers power advantage” and built a four-cylinder engine with the highest specific output of any production car on sale. 181hp per litre in a hatchback? Mental.
Thank god it drives and sounds like it is too! And the A45’s sportiness has clearly been developed by engineers, not marketeers. It won’t be to all tastes. It doesn’t try to be. The ride is brittle but not contrived to be so and, if you appreciate such things, beautifully damped when you’re really on it.
More on the 90s AMG soon...
The harmonisation of the steering feel, pedals and suspension has real class about it, with all interfaces having a twangy tautness about them. Money has been spent where it counts – the A45 differs from regular A-Classes (even if it looks like them) in having a constant ratio steering rack and the linearity of input and weighting speak volumes about the development goals.
And it’s not dumbed down handling-wise either, altering its line under power or with a lift depending on your mood. There are options there for the keen driver that go beyond dumbed-down safety understeer and an ESP catch-net. Only the gearbox frustrates, but then working around the transmission rather than with it has always been part of life with AMG. More on this next week…
This is a completely different AMG from the ones we’ve known and loved thus far. As a fan of the traditional cars I feared the worst. Nice sometimes to be proved wrong.