Ever since Mercedes-Benz pulled back the curtain on their all-new A-Class hatch, enthusiasts have been aching for an equally impressive reveal from the automaker’s performance division, AMG. First came the rather good A 35, but the meat of the anticipation was still on its bigger brother, the A 45.
Because the holiday season is filled to the gills with sentimentality, the outfit from Affalterbach is more keen to go against the grain and shed light into its late-stage testing of their new flagship hot hatch, a more-than-worthy successor to the previous A 45.
Naturally, the car will be based on the W177 and feature all-wheel drive as necessitated to tame the insanely turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine. This time around, power has been upped to over 400 horsepower, or 300kW, and promises some outrageously sideways characteristics as a result.
At a circuit ‘somewhere in northern Germany’, a pre-production A 45 prototype is being put through its final paces by a test driver more keen on hooning it in four-wheel drifts than he is in being pin-sharp accurate. Given the slippery conditions, the new AMG is only too happy to oblige, gracefully rotating and maintaining a controlled angle through the apex.
We still know precious little about this all-new model, though, with most details only being extrapolated from the non-AMG-fettled A-Class. Rather than fashioning a wholly new motor, it is widely suspected that the motor powering the new A 45 will be a heavily revised version of the M133 used previously.
In order to produce more power, it’s possible that the twin-scroll turbocharger would have been ditched for two separate units, perhaps in a sequential arrangement. Should these rumoured outputs prove accurate, the A 45 might take the thunder out of the 4.0-litre V8 from the McLaren Senna, which is the current title holder for the highest specific output engine in current mass production.
It looks as if AMG is nearing the development period it allocated for the car, meaning it’s due for an official premiere in the near future. Given that timeframe, a showroom introduction might be happening as early as mid-2019 to frontline of aged rivals.
BMW had previously wheeled out the M140i, likewise Audi with the RS3, but the former has already begun to phase out 1 Series in preparation for an all-new replacement that is no longer exclusively rear-driven by a longitudinally-mounted engine, a move that also portends the demise of the 6-cylinder hatch.
Meanwhile, Ingolstadt’s RS3 is getting a little long in the tooth and is also due for a successor to emerge. Even when new, the car was criticised for being too much of a blunt instrument and dynamically lacklustre despite its glorious 5-cylinder engine.
For more on Mercedes-Benz and Mercedes-AMG, check out our Showroom.
