New Audi RS3: more than 360bhp

Vijay Pattni grills Quattro boss for exclusive details on the upcoming double-hot hatch

“We haven’t finalised the output of the next Audi RS3,” says Heinz Hollerweger, managing director of Quattro GmbH, “but it’ll probably get around 360bhp.”
A beat. “Will it get more than 400bhp? Well, let’s see.”

Thought that might have piqued your interest. Heinz Hollerweger is the man in charge of everything fast at Audi, and fittingly, screeches up to meet TopGear.com in a race-livered Audi RS7 with the inscription ‘Holli’ on the side. This man likes fast.
We pick his brains about the new RS3 (current version pictured above, having some fun). It’ll be here by the end of 2015, and will come with “an engine that corresponds to the heritage of Audi,” Heinz confirms. “That will be a five cylinder. We want to maintain our heritage on the RS models.”

So it’ll be a development of the 2.5-litre currently sitting in the RS Q3; an engine that can apparently handle at least 520bhp, according to the incredible Clubsport Quattro concept built for Worthersee. It won’t be a variation of the bombastic 2.0-litre turbo four-pot doing business in the S3 and Golf R.

I mention to Heinz the Mercedes 355bhp four-cylinder in the A45 AMG, and he smiles. “I don’t want to talk about competitors, but at Geneva we showed you a TT Coupe with 420bhp in a four-cylinder engine, so we know how to make lots of power from a small four-cylinder. Maybe we could do a small series on this engine. For RS though, I have to keep a five cylinder.”

That Worthersee Clubsport concept is relevant to the future of the RS3, too. “I think what we want to learn from the four-door Clubsport Quattro concept in terms of our next RS3 is how the market responds to a small, RS saloon,” Heinz says.

“This is the most important lesson: we could have put that 2.5-litre five cylinder engine in the Sportback for the Clubsport Quattro concept, but we want to see the acceptance of this saloon package in the US and Chinese markets.”