SA-BUILT MERCEDES-AMG A45 CLOSING IN ON QUARTER MILE WORLD RECORD

It’s been almost 10 years since the Mercedes-AMG A45 first saw the light of day. Back then the car not only looked pretty damn good, it had some pretty serious specifications too. At the time, one of the quickest and most sight-after of the available hot hatches was the Volkswagen Golf in the range-topping 7R guise, a good-looking turbocharged 2.0 with an all-wheel drive setup that had a rather healthy 206kW of power available. As soon as the Mercedes-AMG was released, performance hatchback fans around the world lost their collective minds, mainly because not only did Mercedes enter the hot hatch segment, they managed to do it better. Also having power created by a turbocharged 2.0-litre but fiddled with by AMG engineers saw the power output at an almost unbelievable 265 kW that was directed to all four wheels via a 7-speed twin clutch transmission. The only downside was it still had a Mercedes-AMG price tag. With the car making such good power, many thought it was already on the limit tuning-wise but where there’s a will, there’s a way.