The bratpack

GERMANY'S THREE ARCH-RIVAL BRANDS DELIVER VERY INDIVIDUAL TAKES ON THE HI-PO SMALL CAR. SO DOES ANGRIEST EQUAL BEST?

- GEORG KACHER

HERE’S A QUESTION: does anyone actually stage a pedal-to-the-metal 0-100km/h run? It’s a figure quoted all the time, and taken very seriously in certain circles. If you regard it as the hot-hatch holy grail, then here’s the spoiler: Audi claims a sprint time of 3.8sec for the RS3, the Mercedes-AMG A45 S can do the job in supposedly 3.9sec, while the BMW M240i is another four-tenths behind at 4.3sec. Half a second between first and last.

But that dragstrip exercise is, in reality, only a fragment of the bigger picture. Neither the RS3 nor the A45 feels as quick off the mark as a PDK-equipped Cayman GT4, for instance, which claims a time identical to the Merc. And when it comes to seat-of-the-pants feel, the M240i xDrive really doesn’t seem half a second slower.

There’s a good reason behind all this. The 2.0-litre fourcylinder AMG engine needs 5000rpm to muster its maximum torque of 500Nm. The Audi 2.5-litre five-cylinder’s identical 500Nm peak is at 2250rpm, while the 3.0-litre straight-six in the BMW requires only 1900rpm to produce its 500Nm.

It’s not the number of cylinders that matters here. What really counts is the combination of displacement, calibration and gearing. The result is that the BMW can, on public roads, keep up with its rivals – and that’s without even pulling out all the stops.

With this trio of compact all-wheel drive performance cars – you might want to call them hyper hatches, except the BMW’s not a hatch – you soon realise that there’s a significant gap between on-paper form and real-life observations. It’s not the engine in isolation, nor the chassis, or those in-dash bits of tech that tip the scales. More than ever, this threesome is all about the sum of each player’s parts.