Mercedes-AMG A45

What’s AMG done – fitted some sort of Bloodhound-style rocket motor?
The next best thing – eked even more power out of the world’s highest specific output engine. The facelifted A45 AMG develops 376bhp and 350lb ft, rises of 21bhp and 23lb ft on the original.
Remember, we’re talking about a 2.0-litre, four-cylinder engine here. One that’s road-legal, fully warrantied by one of the world’s most recognised luxury carmakers, and returns north of 40mpg on the official combined cycle.
This incredible motor develops more punch than the V8 in the back of a Ferrari F355. It is, regardless of the moral dubiousness of The Horsepower Wars, a remarkable engineering achievement.
So it’s fast, then?
Yes, both on paper, and on a road. The raw stats claim 0.4 seconds have been trimmed from the A45’s 0-62mph sprint, which falls to 4.2 seconds. That beats Audi’s 4.3 boast for the RS3 (never mind that Top Gear has already timed a fully fuelled RS3 at 3.9 seconds over the same discipline).
The top speed? I ran out of clear autobahn before the A45 stopped pulling, north of 160mph. It’s extremely fast.
The diminutive engine is nonetheless tractable, and pulls keenly from zip, though it really prefer life above 3500rpm. And, at last, we’ve got a gearbox that agrees.

Tell me more about that gearbox.
The A45’s transmission is all about raw speed, and thanks to shorter gear ratios for third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, the acceleration is relentless. Oh, and launch control has graduated from ‘amusing’ to ‘downright uncomfortable’.
The way the A45 initially moves from standstill to, say, 15mph does things to the squishy bits of your body that verge on abuse.

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BMW M140i

Refresh my memory, if you would.
Well, iDrive’s had a refresh with sharper graphics a la 7 Series. Only kidding, let’s talk about whirring bits of metal. 
Power is up by 14bhp to 355bhp, while a hefty 396lb ft (a 37lb ft leap) matches the M2’s output. This is courtesy of a new 3.0-litre straight-six turbo motor that revs cleanly and crisply to 7,000rpm, sounds sweeter than anything else in the class (if you pigeonhole the £7,000 dearer five-cylinder Audi RS3 as a rung above), and is slightly greener than the motor it ousts. 
BMW claims 36.2mpg and 179g/km of CO2, bettering the M135i by 0.7mpg and 9g/km. And that’s for the six-speed manual. Spec the £1,430 eight-speed ZF auto and the official claim rises to nigh-on 40mpg. As basic as it gets, you’ll pay £31,875 in total, which is still a bit of a bargain for so much power.

And the auto makes it quicker too?
Yup, thanks to those relatively seamless shifts and precisely no fear of human cock-up, an auto M140 oozes to 62mph in 4.6 seconds – 0.3 less than before. So it’s still right up there with the Golf Rs and Focus RSs. In fact, the powertrain is irreproachable. Beyond the tuneful engine note, pinpoint (for a turbo) throttle response, urgent torque and obedient gearbox, what more did you want, exactly?

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Seat Leon Cupra 300

Another new Seat Leon Cupra?
Unbelievably, yes. Since it first arrived in 2013 with a choice of either 265bhp or 280bhp, Seat killed off the 265bhp version, then boosted it to 290bhp, and sometime after having had a crack at the Nürburgring lap record, messed around with the bumpers, ruined the infotainment and gave us this: the Leon Cupra 300. Go on, guess how much power it’s got?

Is it fast?
Efficiently and effortlessly so. With the six-speed paddleshift gearbox doing the legwork for you, it’ll get from 0-62mph in a claimed 5.8 seconds – but a lot more consistently than you’ll manage the same in a manual Civic Type R, say – and do the standard 155mph all out. As you’re no doubt familiar with this 2.0-litre direct-injection turbo engine from Golf GTI, Golf R, Skoda vRS, Audi and so on, it’ll come as no surprise that there’s very little turbo lag to work around. 

So it sounds good too?
Um, no. It sounds flat. There is some audio-massaging going on, but it’s not as warbly as a Golf R or Audi S3. It’s as if Seat (and Skoda) are denied as rorty an engine note as their more premium cousins in an effort to create some clean air between the brands. But it’s not as if the Seat is a bargain – a DSG five-door Cupra is £31,805. That’s north of what the new Type R will cost you, and £2,445 less than a Golf R. Monthly payment-wise, an equally-specced Cupra is £405, and the Golf R is £445. So, one night out fewer a month and you get the VW. But no friends. It’s that close.

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Audi S1

How much?
For a supermini, rather a lot. The three-door is £24,905, the five-door Sportback an even saltier £25,635. But then, you do get 231bhp, four-wheel drive and 0-62 in 5.8sec (or 5.9 for the heavier five-door)

Better be good then…
It is. We drove the S1 in very wintry Scandinavia a few months back. It felt terrific, but it was running on studded tyres. We didn’t want to blurt to premature conclusions about the handling, though it was obvious it had potential.
Sure enough, it’s an eager little terrier. Though there’s a whopping 273lb ft of torque when the turbo spools up, and relatively short gearing, there’s never a shortage of traction. But better still, it tells you what it’s up to. The steering is precise and has real feel, and the chassis can be tweaked into a gentle dance as you lift the throttle into a bend or mash it out of it.
As good as a Fiesta ST?
Different kind of good. It’ll never wag its tail like the Ford, and the steering’s not as sharp. But when any front-drive hatch is frittering away its power in a wet second-gear bend, they won’t see which way the S1 went. And on a bumpy narrow road, the Audi’s Quattro drive also quells the torque steer. Not entirely, but to the point where it doesn’t matter.
And fast?
Worth-the-money fast. It’s actually a detuned version of the engine in the Audi S3. The S3 has 300bhp when you rev it right out, the S1 ‘just’ 231bhp. But their mid-range performance is pretty similar. So you can change up early in the S1 if that’s what suits you. It will rev to 6500, and it sounds fairly fruity doing it, but there’s seldom any need. You’ll like wriggling through the gearbox though. The shift is pretty snicky for a transverse-engined car, and the pedal positions and actions are beautifully judged.

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Volkswagen Golf GTI Clubsport S

Wait, another fast Golf GTI?
Yes, as the hot hatch arms race has intensified with seemingly never-ending one-upmanship to be the King of the Nürburgring, there have been more and more variants of the humble Golf GTI brought into the world.

So what’s this one then?
The Clubsport S, the most powerful production Golf ever. And the fastest ever front-wheel-drive production car to lap the Nürburgring. It’s a £35,000 stripped-out, semi-slicked, uber powerful and aero’d version of the standard Clubsport (now known as the ‘Edition 40’).

How fast is it?
Very. It managed a 7:49.21sec around the Green Hell – 1.5sec faster than Honda’s Civic Type R – to claim the front-wheel-drive production car lap record. To give you some perspective of how fast these humble hot hatches are getting, that’s quicker than the motorsport-derived Porsche 996 GT3 (a true benchmark of quick), but a whopping 36 seconds a lap quicker than a Performance Pack GTI. Which is monstrous. Like, a full six Vines worth of time.

How much is it?
Official pricing hasn’t been announced yet, but expect it to be in the region of £35,000. Which is a lot. But with only 150 right-hand drive cars set to come to the UK, it should hold its value well.
What we don’t know is how it’ll perform on our shoddy roads. But we can’t wait to find out.

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