AMG 45 S: Is Mercedes’ New Hatch ‘Really’ Better than the First?
AMG on the ‘Table Top’
They call Turn 5 the Table Top — its braking point is blind, so it really is a hoot. The 90-degree right-hander that follows once again tortures the 245/35 R 19 rubber wrapped around my yellow car’s black 5-twin-spoke 19-inch 8.5J light alloys, but 45 S does everything brilliantly through there — there’s hardly any lean and it feels just like a race car. In every respect.
It should be — tauter and stiffer than even the 35, the 45 S gains several cross braces, an extensively reinforced chassis and even a lightweight aluminium ‘shearing plate’ under the engine, while all its mountings must be stiffer too because it really feels racecar refined on track. This is a proper performance car, no doubt about it.
A 45 S blasts along the short plateau out of T5, before another hard dose on the brakes is followed by the superbly responsive steering responding mightily to another aggressive yank on the wheel as the front darts into another right hand hairpin in T6. That’s quickly followed by a brutal on-the-power switch left into T6, for which you really should brace your neck.
I suppose its frequency-selective adaptive AMG dampers with optional three-mode AMG Ride Control and high performance coil springs are to blame for that. AMG’s marketing men had promised exceptional directional stability, most dynamic cornering and limited body roll, but the level of vehicle dynamics really do take A 45 S’s sporty driving experience to the next level.
Out of seven, AMG 45 S bullets down the hill into the final Turn 8, where those brakes once again protest as they take hot hatch retardation to another level, before it turns in on that ticket and rocketing on down the pit straight to commence another blinding lap.
They asked why I was smiling so broadly as I stood there after half a dozen laps next to my 45 S tick-tick-ticking while the heat sank. I just kept on grinning. Sure the tyres were well past their best and the car became a trite sloppier as a result, as the tours reeled off, but everything else about A 45 S just kept on singing along.
No long pedal, no hot floor under the foot, no side-effects whatsoever. This is one hugely capable street car on track. Of course if you throw a set of Michelin Sport Pilots, semi-slicks or similar at it, that track-oriented rubber will most likely not drop off at all.
We were not finished yet — remember the Drift Mode I mentioned earlier? Well, the lads from AMG had another little exercise prepared for us on the skid pan, which also proved most enlightening as to this car’s progress into its second coming.
You first need to work through a few programming steps to prepare and select both Race and Drift modes, during the course of which the car’s tone becomes considerably more gruff as the AMG Exhaust opens up, to add to the quite direct — even brutal attitude of the chassis setup.
Drift mode utilises all of AMG A 45 S’s newest chassis features to best effect and while the ghost in the machine requires you to re-learn the nuances of drifting and to adopt a bit more of a push attitude to get the rear-biased AWD system to work at its best, once you have the hang of it, it really is impressive. Add a little empathy in throttle control, and this car makes for quite the drift tool, too.
Still, there is Comfort
Surprisingly, in spite of all this, AMG promises that ride comfort has also been improved over the previous model in comfort mode, which makes us wonder if we’ve forgotten how harsh that must have been.
Let’s just say that this car is honest about what it’s driving over, even in its most pliant mode. Of course, speaking about comfort, the Mercedes-AMG A45 S comes equipped with a sublime cockpit, complete with the ultimate man to machine interface in the auto industry right now. Merc’s impeccable MBUX infotainment with its Starship Enterprise instrumentation crosses most of the dash and features Classic, Sport and particularly striking Supersport modes, the last noted with a racy 3D rev counter and info bars on each side.
Steering Wheel
A 45 S also has a steering wheel that harks after the device Lewis Hamilton uses — besides the brilliant touchpad and market leading multifunction controls on each stalk, there are a pair of additional controllers just below to ensure one-touch control of all the splendid above mentioned chassis sublimities.
This car’s sophisticated MBUX system adds a fine AMG Track Pace ‘virtual race engineer’ data logging system in the S models, which will come in more than handy if you’re a track day fan, thanks to 80 vehicle specific data points that will go a long way to improve your driving skills as you go.
All those niceties are actually however of secondary importance to the true red-blooded petrolhead, because this car’s real attraction quite simply has to be its quite astounding sporting envelope. Right up top, I mention how I concluded my similar experience of the Mercedes-AMG A45 S’s predecessor’s launch malarkey seven years ago.
To be honest, this car is a most significant step above the car it replaces in every single respect — not only is it considerably more powerful, quicker and faster, but its chassis improvements are night and day enough to marvel how far Mercedes-AMG has progressed in seven short years.
That simply leaves me to once again conclude that the King is Dead. Long Live the Hatchback King!
Photos: Michele Lupini