REVIEW: Audi RS3 is a performance sedan for you and me

May I present a problem? Day-to-day, I drive three kinds of cars — first, my own Volkswagen Transporter. Its newish and we can get all four kids in with grandma and a friend as well, so it’s a good family car.

When I’m not driving the Kombi, I’m in my 52-year-old Land Rover. I love this machine very much (it’s my fourth Series Landy) but objectively I know it is a terrible car by every metric and I should almost certainly sell it while hipsters still think they’re cool.

 Third, about twice a month I find myself behind the wheel of a Group B rental belonging to Avis. So far, that means a VW Polo Vivo (rather grown-up for the money), a Suzuki Swift (very good), a Nissan Magnite (not fabulous to be honest) or a Toyota Starlet (also quite good). Some of time the cars aren’t broken in some way and don’t smell too bad.

When I sat down low behind the wheel of the latest Audi RS3 sedan, it did occur to me that I needed to be careful. If most days I drive a bus, a rental that’s apparently completed a tour of the Danakil, or a belching museum piece with no brakes, I should expect the RS3 to feel something special.

I was hoping to write a piece about how the RS3 kind of pootles about being a VW Golf with some nice equipment nailed to it, but then turns unexpectedly into a rocket ship when you ask it for some power. But I’m afraid that’s not how it goes. The RS3 may indeed share a platform with the Golf, but for day-to-day usability with a turn of pace and poise, the perennially excellent GTi will serve you very well.

The RS3 is a altogether more uncompromising offer. And that’s a way to say that there are compromises you’d never find in a GTi. It is loud. The ride is challenging at slow speeds on rutted urban roads. The dual-clutch gearbox chunters and chatters in traffic.

It’s very nice inside, though. A bang up-to-date Audi interior, which of course is high praise. It’s granite-solid and all very subdued and German. It’s excellent. It’s also a sedan — a rare thing these days — which means it’s practical to boot.

But to be honest I was just about done with bumping and jerking around Cape Town when I decided to take the long route round to the school. This required a blast up the Glen, and on those short kilometres I had forgiven the RS3 everything.

What you pay for in the traffic you get back on the open road. My goodness this is a savagely competent little nugget of a car. All-wheel drive, and a hugely powerful turbocharged 2.5l, five-cylinder motor combine with compact proportions and prodigious grip to make the RS3 feel uncatchable by everything except some pretty exotic stuff. We’re talking about almost 300kW and 500Nm in a compact sedan car. That translates to a 0-100km/h sprint in under four seconds.

It takes some getting used to, just how hard you can lean on that all-wheel drive mid-corner. I mean, you can really hoof it, far more than feels sensible, and the little Audi will just pivot around some theoretical centrifugal point and slingshot out of a corner in a way that seems to defy physics.

Audis get accused of understeering at the limit of grip. That may be, but it does beg the question: what, sir, are you doing there? If you have managed to coax understeer out of this RS3 then you have, I’m afraid, driven badly. You have gone into the corner too hot and are asking the car to fix your mistakes after the fact. Gentle and predictably understeer is an engineering admonishment that you ought to take to heart.

Stable in, bliksem-fast out: that’s the RS3 way to corner, and while the rear-wheel drive boys will be sliding all over the show, and the front-wheel drive lads are leaving great slabs of their Michelins all over the tarmac, you’ll already be lining up the next apex with the unique five-cylinder soundtrack to keep you company.

Now, I will confess to enjoying an occasional serving of rear-drive hoonery, but helming fast rear-drive cars is genuinely a skill that come with spending time in fast cars in safe environments.

Anyone with a licence and a decent head on their shoulders can extract some joy from the RS3. The better you are, the faster you will go, but generally it goes where you point it, and you will have an absolute hoot driving it no matter your skill level. For some, this is a reason to roll out the pejoratives. Not special. Anyone can drive it. Where’s the challenge in that? And so forth.

Down with that kind of snobbery. Brilliant engineers have built cars that an ordinary family can own and transport eight people and all their junk. They’ve built rough 4x4s that will outlive their owners. They’ve built tough, cheap runarounds that can do the Avis duty and soldier on.

And, in the case of the RS3 they’ve built a performance sedan that you and me and anyone can drive like hell and have a great time — all for about R1.2m. That’s a stack of cash, of course, but look around at that price to see what else you can find before casting judgment.

Yes, there are cars out there that require more talent to drive fast. So, go get one if it bothers you. Ironically, Audi’s most expensive A3, at R1.2m, is an icon of automotive democratisation. It’s for anyone who can afford it. Well done, Audi.