You know that highly congested hot hatch segment where the Volkswagen Golf R, Audi S3 and BMW M140i live? Well, it’s about to get a whole lot more stuffy thanks to the imminent arrival of the new Mercedes-AMG A35, which AMG’s communications boss Dominik Greuel has just told Indian Autos Blog will land at the Paris motor show.
As its name suggests, the A35 - expected to be priced from £35,000 - will be a little brother to the A45 from the class above. And like most younger siblings with an older bro in the sixth form, the A35 could turn up for its first day with a competitive advantage over its classmates thanks to a long list of hand-me-downs, including a certain M260 four-cylinder engine.
For the A45, this turbocharged unit will be a further developed version of the engine that powers the current car, which is already so potent that it regularly confuses itself for a ballistic missile (just refer to the used examples in the classifieds). But in the A35, the engine will use different internals, including its own pistons, to lower both the cost of production and the M260’s peak output.
AMG has remained tight-lipped about what to expect from both hot hatch models, but the class norm is around 300hp, so expect something just above that figure. This will the leave the A35 close to 100hp short of its brother, but with all-wheel drive in its technical armoury, you'll see a 0-62mph time of around 4.5sec, which is still fairly rapid by the class measure.
Could the A35 adopt a slightly more forgiving chassis setup than its brother to provide a bit of clear air between the two models? We’re not sure, because AMG’s other second-rank models, like the six-cylinder C43 (little bro to the V8 C63), are usually offered with the same chassis hardware as their siblings. As such, the A35 is likely to get the same adjustable damping with drive modes ranging from Comfort to Race.
If our prediction for a £35k starting price is on the money, the A35 will pull the entry-level cost for a new AMG down by close to £7,000, expanding the division’s reach. Questions is, will a detuned A45 be able to carve out a space for itself in what is already a fiercely competitive segment? Gven what we've seen of the new A-Class so far, we see no reason for why it shouldn't...
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