All Hail the Mercedes A45 AMG, the New King of the Hot Hatch
We live in a golden age of performance cars. No matter what automotive category you want, whether it’s SUVs, sedans, coupes, sports cars, hatchbacks, or wagons, you can find a performance variant that suits your needs. It will also come with enough horsepower and torque to put racecars from the late ’80s and early ’90s to shame. And these are for the street.
That said, one of Mercedes’ newest performance cars is actually a smaller hatchback. But don’t let the A45 AMG’s size fool you. It has about the same amount of horsepower as a new Porsche 911 or a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona. Yes, the new Mercedes A45 AMG has a whopping 376 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque, good enough for the little 2.0L to get to 62 mph in just 4.2 seconds.
But why did Mercedes and AMG develop this car to have so much horsepower? Simple, they wanted to beat Audi’s RS 3. According to sources inside Mercedes, the fact that the RS 3 was faster than the A45 AMG never sat well with the engineers, so for the mid-cycle refresh, AMG added an extra 21 horsepower.
Personally, as a hot hatch owner, I revel in the fact that automakers are building these awesome affordable hatches. They’re comfortable, stylish, fast, and practical. What more could you ask for?
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