MERCEDES-AMG A45 S

To date, the original Moose Dodger was the best A-Class produced by Mercedes – a sophisticated chunk of sandwich-floored engineering, and something of a Tardis in the accommodation stakes to boot.

Alas, over-deterred by the all too real risk of an unseemly encounter between permanently nose-bagged, Twiglet-legged quadruped and Mercedes in, say, Macclesfield, the company suddenly decided that ‘A’ no longer stood for smallest car in the range but ‘A Golf Rival’. The result was a bit of a dog even in AMG 45 guise; fast, but displaying all the subtlety and finesse of trout fishing with hand grenades.

By contrast, the second generation A Golf Rival-Class is really rather good. And in AMG guise – the bows an hommage both to the pleasingly brutal AMG GT and the face of the man who sticks his head out of a car window at 150mph and opens his mouth- it’s an instant classic. Not least because, as with ownership of every classic car, you’re destined to grow a beard in a lay-by whilst trying to get it to work as you would wish…

Twin 10.25-inch screens presented as a high-gloss pizza chef’s paddle chopped into the dash-top in lieu of a properly cowled instrument binnacle are all very well, and do boast excellent graphics. But they lay the foundations for a software quagmire of Glastonbury-esque platform and content complexity. We must be grateful that you can let your fingers do the walking, and that the mud is merely metaphorical.

Control systems in triplicate may be reassuring aboard an Airbus, but give off a strong whiff of overkill to those flying at ground level. And over and above the inevitable drive mode and undercarriage selection systems, the surfing of screen after screen after screen unearths the endlessly adjustable parameters of myriad Stuff You Didn’t Know You Needed. Apparently, the Chinese love this sort of thing, but those of us who have no time to spare for glancing at G-force metres and stopwatches when pressing on find it, at best a distraction, and, at worst – when the absence of a simple button means menu surfing merely to disengage the loathsome and steering-corrupting lane keeping assistant every time you start the car – increasingly irksome.

How about one button, simply marked ‘ME’, which you stab to configure everything, and I do mean everything, exactly as it was after you first spent a respectable beard setting every parameter to your satisfaction? Better yet, all could be automatically effected via your own key every time you merely approach the car…

And that’s worth having, because all this titting about simply distracts from that fact that, from a mechanical engineering perspective (remember mechanical engineering, anyone?) the A 45 S is something of a riot.

The fun starts in the engine bay, with the world’s most powerful four-cylinder turbo in series production. In A 45 S guise, 415bhp and 368lb ft have been painstakingly extracted from a transverse-mounted, hand-built 2.0 litre unit, and directed to all four wheels via an eight-speed dual clutch transmission.

Said power and torque is enough to fling the highly-strung hatchback to 62mph in just 3.9 seconds, and on to 167mph. However, even with a suitably sporting drive mode dialled in, there’s precious little torque available below 3000rpm through the gears. Happily, progress thereafter is pleasingly rapid and accompanied by a properly waspish exhaust note and the inevitable din of cold milk hitting giant Rice Krispies on overrun.

The transmission is appropriately oleaginous, only delivering the hint of a nudge to occupants once you’re playing with the paddles towards the rev limit in each gear. At motorway cruising speeds, eighth gear reveals itself to be essentially a frugality-hunting overdrive offering, dropping out at slightest hint of an incline.

Sport drive modes also add pleasing heft to a helm which, even if not the last word in communication, lacks nothing in accuracy and does at least feature a readily graspable rim, unlike the cross-section of a prize python offered to the hands in BMW M cars.

Regarding matters more sinuous, the ‘+’ version of Mercedes’ all-wheel drive brings proceedings properly to life with a new rear axle differential housing one multidisc clutch for each wheel. So not only is torque shunted fore and aft but also up to 100% from side to side.

The upshot of said trickery is that, with inner rear braking intervention tucking you into bends and optimum torque distribution chucking you out, the limits of twitch-free, lean-on-the-outer-rear-as-hard-as-you-like cornering are still up for grabs when the ff-C bravery buckles before the shrubbery does…

Smooth, sun-baked Spanish tarmac provides little information as to the pliancy of, and ride quality offered by, tricked-up adaptive suspension with frequency-selective dampers, so we must wait for a home-spun test to report with any veracity.

A word on the Coupe, Light, A-Class: Its body shape means the CLA 45 S can wear a wider front and rear track, by 8mm and 27mm respectively, 19-inch wheels that are half an inch wider front and back, and commensurately larger 255/35 ZR 19 tyres than the hatchback’s 245s. Everything else mechanical is identical; differences in bodyshell and 50kg extra in the kerb weight stakes making the CLA 0.1 of a second slower to 62mph than the A.

Somebody out there is bound to tell you that minimally wider track and rubber award the baby saloon a whisker greater handling prowess than the hatchback, but after a day and half pressing on, all I’m prepared to concede is that the CLA makes the same enthralling assortment of noises off, the addition of a boot simply delivering them from what sounds like farther afield.

With starting prices estimated at £50,000 for the hatch and £52,000 for the saloon, the A 45 S is not a cheap offering. Unlike its predecessor, however, it does at least seem worth it; at least for the mechanical engineering if not the supercilious software.

Verdict

Everything its predecessor wasn’t. Fabulous engineering and terrific dynamics buried under an irritatingly dense layer of software faff and frippery.

THE FIRST HOUR

10 seconds
Where’s the ruddy great rear wing we’ve seen in all the publicity shots?

3 minutes
Where’s the ruddy lane keeping assist off button? Please, not in a menu…

15 minutes
Fantastic grip, poise and noise. Cornering to make even the driver car sick.

55 minutes
Passenger time. Snug, comfortable seat but… JESUS, where’s the Jesus handle?

PLUS
Superb powertrain; clever rear differential; terrific cornering

MINUS
Pricey; irritating blizzard of funbloc software