It’s a hatch, it’s sold under Audi’s own sports banner, it’s equipped with Audi’s most ‘sporting’ power train, and with in excess of 300 HP under the bonnet and a price tag knocking on (and in many cases over) £40k, it better be scorching, toilet-paper-in-the-freezer, vindaloo with extra naga chillies hot.
Let’s be honest, the only thing ‘grown-up’ when comparing the S3 to other hot hatches, including it’s stablemate the Golf R, is the size of the wallet buying it, and the fashion choices and the breadth of the waistlines of the people sitting in it. The grown up element is a figment of PR, advertising and brand positioning. The S3 is the answer to the question “how do we sell Golf R’s and GTi’s to people who think they’re tainted a little to much with the odour of boy-racers, boom-boxes and backwards baseball caps?” The changes made make for a more sober, subtle and visually restrained car, which is mirrored in the choices made by the chassis dynamics team. It’s been designed to appeal to middle agers who like to pretend they’re still young, but prefer the labels on their designer t-shirts to be postage stamp sized, find the jiggly ride induced by properly sorted suspension to annoying, the noise generated by proper light-weighting irritating, and the hip hugging bolsters of proper sports seats to tight. People in fact, who are just like me...
The S3 goes like a rocket ship, and is a bit classier than the other cars that also go like rocket ships. The fact that it might not take the corners with as much panache is irrelevant, since to do so would needlessly shake up that nice bottle of 2015 Montrachet Picard I have in the boot, and bruise the fair-trade organic avocados in passenger footwell...
