Sunday Drive: Mercedes-AMG A 45 S

Saturday, 25 July 2020

The Mercedes-AMG A 45 S packs more power than the last Holden Commodore V8 and is ferociously fast.

MERCEDES-AMG A 45 S
Base price: $111,000
Powertrain and economy: 2.0-litre turbo-petrol inline four-cylinder, 310kW/500Nm, 8-speed dual-clutch transmission, AWD, combined economy 8.9L/100km, CO2 204g/km (source:RightCar).

The A 45's unashamedly boy-racer looks hide an incredibly polished performance car underneath.

Vital statistics: 4419mm long, 1796mm wide, 1440mm high, 2729mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 355 litres, 19-inch alloy wheels.
We like: Searing performance, engine and transmission are fantastic, high-quality interior, surprisingly comfortable.

Behold; the most powerful production 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine in the world, with a staggering 310kW of power.

We don't like: Edition 1 exterior is jarringly boy-racer, it’s actually too good for New Zealand roads, fails to engage.

The last Mercedes-AMG A 45 was an angry, belligerent little beast that was overly aggressive and felt very much like a car that started life as something ordinary but was molested by madmen and given way more power than it ever should have rightfully possessed.

Is there such a thing as too good? The A 45 S is perhaps proof that there is.

And I loved it for that.

Sure, it had its flaws – its ride was harsh, its steering was distant – but it was weapons-grade fun in an unlikely package and single-handedly invented a segment beyond the hot hatch that no normal person would have ever thought we needed – the hyper hatch.

The A 45 S is ballistically fast and violently yellow.

**READ MORE:

* Sunday Drive: Mercedes-AMG A 35 Sedan

You can’t even escape the yellow in the superbly comfortable and tech-packed interior.

* Road Test Review: Porsche 911 Carrera

* Road test review: Mercedes-AMG GLE 53

If you like stickers, wings, scoops and canards, then the A 45 S Edition 1 is the thing for you.

* Five carmakers that use confusing badges

It was one of those cars that wasn’t massive fun despite its flaws, but rather because of them.

And now there is a new one and Mercedes has decided that the feral little lunatic had to grow up and become a proper performance car, rather than a psychotic little knee-capper, so essentially unleashed AMG to take the lead in the A-Class’ development, making it an AMG that devolved into a lesser car, rather than the other way around, much like it did with the new G Wagen.

And while the result is staggeringly fast, remarkably capable and frighteningly competent, I just don’t feel as much love for it anymore.

Essentially, what AMG has done here is make a fantastically good Audi RS car – something that is fantastically quick, yet so clinically excellent at what it does that it fails to truly engage on an emotional level.

The new A 45 S is a slickly polished performer that effortlessly foots it with Porsche 911s and, as a result, acts all serious and grown-up like them too.

Now, this is not a bad thing in any way – after all, the A 45 S will rocket to 100kmh from a standing start in a frankly ridiculous 3.9 seconds (the $223,000 Porsche 911 Carerra does it in 4.2 seconds), it has a fantastically high-quality interior that is packed with the latest tech, it is comfortable and refined when it needs to be and is almost ridiculously easy to live with as a daily driver.

The engine is relentlessly powerful literally right across its rev range, yet remarkably docile and tractable when not on maximum attack.

The transmission is brutally efficient and lightning-fast when screaming up the revs, yet silky-smooth and unobtrusive when slurring through the gears at low speeds.

The chassis is spectacularly sharp and responsive when charging through corners, yet is impressively comfortable and compliant when cruising.

So impressive are its all-round abilities that you could actually make a solid argument for it being the perfect car.

And that is a large part of the problem I personally have with it – it is almost too perfect. Much like a fast RS Audi, AMG has tried so hard to make the perfect all-rounder that it has forgotten to add any personality or deep engagement into the mix.

Smashing the A 45 S along a tightly winding road at frankly horrifying speeds in the real world is effortless and feels like a very good video game.

Again, this is not actually a bad thing in itself, because a lot of people want exactly that from a car – after all, Audi sells a lot of RS cars – and it would be easy take the case that this is exactly why AMG has made the A 45 S like it is. Good business sense, after all.

When Mercedes launched the A 45 S internationally it chose to do it at the Jarama race circuit in Spain where the A 45 S proved to be utterly intoxicating up at its limits (well, let’s be honest: the driver’s limits…), and you could unleash the much-vaunted “drift mode” which channels the power to the rear in gloriously anti-social smokey fashion, but the transition to local roads – where you can’t do any of that – is just too damn easy for it.

Basically, it’s simply too good to be much legal fun on New Zealand open roads. But if you want a seriously quick, comfortable and capable performance car that can embarrass Porsche 911s for half the money then the A 45 S will be utterly perfect for you.

But I am afraid that it is just a bit too perfect for my tastes.