I tested the Audi S3 Sportback – it’s a family car with rally car DNA with armfuls of entertainment
KEEP your Costa and your Starbucks – this is a bit of me.
A mountain-top pit stop serving proper Italian coffee and grub at “not Costa prices”.
Even better, whichever way you look, you’re surrounded by rally memorabilia.
There’s a reason for that.
We had to drive up some classic Rallye Sanremo roads to get here, in conditions not unlike a WRC game on your PlayStation.
Narrow, twisty, bumpy, technical, one minute sunny, one minute foggy, dodging four-legged locals on the way.
Major adrenalin rush.
Natural environment for a quattro.
Which is exactly what we did it in.
We borrowed a medium-spice Audi S3 Sportback — 333hp with quattro four-wheel drive — to send it up the Italian Alps like the legendary Audi Quattro Group B rally car once did.
The car that made quattro, quattro. The don.
Audi tamed Rallye Sanremo three times in the Eighties, with Michele Mouton in ’81, Stig Blomqvist the following year and Walter Rohrl in ’85.
To this day, Mouton is the only woman to win at the sport’s highest level.
Photos on the cafe walls capture their heroics, along with a framed 1985 Rallye Sanremo rally plate, which was too big to smuggle in my rucksack.
The S3 isn’t a rally car.
It’s a family car with rally car DNA. Smooth and easy when you drive it normally.
Armfuls of entertainment when you don’t.
It’s a lower, faster, grippier version of the regular A3 and little brother to the supercar-slaying RS3 with its 400hp five-cylinder engine.
But here’s the thing. The recently updated S3 is closer than ever to the RS3.
Power is up 23hp to 333hp, gearshifts are quicker, the brakes are bigger and it’s now endowed with a torque splitter on the rear axle.
Grippier version
That’s a direct lift from the RS3.
In normal use, the torque splitter can shift power from wheel to wheel, increasing agility and high-speed stability.
Then there’s Dynamic+ mode, which sends as much power as possible to the outside wheel to help you drift like a pro.
That same mode increases the idle speed of the engine by 200rpm to 1,300rpm to add a shot of espresso to the traffic light grand prix.
Pops and bangs from the quad exhausts add to the excitement.
It’s not as Asbo as the RS3, but not much is, unless you double your spend.
The cabin is typical Audi. Beautifully executed.
The right mix of screens and hard controls. The Sport seats hug you in place. Google Maps is your co-driver.
There’s room in the back for the ankle-biters and a boot for all the usual family debris.
I don’t remember much else because I was too busy having fun.
I wouldn’t choose banana yellow, though. I’d go black. Like my coffee.
Key facts: Audi S3 Sportback
Price: £50,570
Engine: 2-litre turbo petrol
Power: 333hp
0-62mph: 4.7 secs
Top speed: 155mph
Economy: 33mpg
CO2: 194g/km
Out: Now