I had a stock car with the same spec as one the quotes you sent me, it wasn't a particularly rare spec.
We still have an Estoril 5dr in the showroom and I have underwritten one today with Sunroof,adaptive drive,dct,pro-media,sun-pro,interior/driver comfort pack in a 3dr again in Estoril.
We do pretty well with the m135i.
DCT?
Anyway, back on subject..
I managed to blag an A45 for the day yesterday and did a good 250 miles whilst testing it. I'm not going to waffle on with a full 10 page road test report, but there are a few bits I will cover..
Looks - This car was a pretty standard spec car in White with the hideous standard 18's, so I wasn't head over heels in love with it in this spec. With the right bits they can look A LOT better IMO. Interior was a lot nicer than I expected and the seats were pretty fantastic in not only their visual appeal, but their comfort too..
Ride & Handling - For a heavy weight haldex equipped car, I was mighty impressed with how chuckable and light on it's feet the car felt tbh. The turn in was delicious and grip was obviously available by the bucket load.
I was keen to feel what the ride was like in the car after reading so many reports about how harsh the car can be on anything other than smooth tarmac. I was very surprised how smooth the ride felt to be honest and was initially expecting that my dentist was going to have to re-attach all my fillings, but it was fine. Definitely a lot lot smoother than my mates Megane 250 that I drove recently. I will add that the car wasn't equipped with the optional AMG suspension and bigger 19's though, so this would most probably change with these additions.
Performance - As expected, this thing leaves the line like a scalded cat and is pretty ballistic to illegal speeds (especially for a stock 2.0L car
). 0-60 (according to some non-scientific testing with Dynolicious) revealed it was consistently cracking 0-60 is around 4.0-4.1. What it would be like high speeds and Vmax will have to wait for another day/track.
The gearbox was spot-on and I never experienced any of the downshift issues that a lot of the motor journalists found. Whether this has been ironed out with a software update or whether I was lucky, I don't know. Where I did feel the car/gearbox did let itself down was with the gearing. 2nd gear was ridiculous short compared with 3rd and 4th and when downshifting from 3rd to 2nd turning right on a RA for example, the car would sit very high in the rev range and would almost immediately change gear when applying the throttle again. This was made worse with 3rd gear feeling so much longer and felt as though the car had dropped out of it's power band (5-5.5k). When in S or C modes, the car would change at a smidgeon over 6k, just when it felt like it was just getting going and IMO would relish another 700-1000rpm.
The power is nowhere near as 'boosty' as I expected for a small-ish capacity TC'd engine running 1.8 bar and seemed quite linear with a nice punch after 5k as the revs got higher. This was all spoiled for me in the lower gears by the car upshifting.
My best mate managed to film a 'Race Start' launch when on a AMG Driving day and sent me this vid a few weeks back. You can see here what I mean by the gearing. 2nd gear is all over by around 47mph...
All in all I did like the car very much and budget dependent, could be a serious contender as the BM's replacement (especially as I fancy a bit of 4wd/all weather performance). I also eagerly await to see what the tuners can do with this engine (if anything) when they start having a play, but I don't expect there to be huge gains if reliability is required.
