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.
Local c content creator and automotive fanatic Nicholas Neofitou got his hands on one a while back, and with the events he sets up under his SA Torque banner it was only a matter of time before he started chasing numbers and the title of the fastest A45 AMG in the world. Here in SA there are only a handful of them that are modified, or who’s owners are prepared to modify them because while they are the most powerful in their segment, they’re also the most expensive by a fair margin. That didn’t stop Nicholas though, and the car has been tinkered with in all the right places by the right people, and the results are really good. The power has risen from that factory 265 kW with 450 Nm on the crank to a mad 422 kW with 763 Nm on the wheels. This power increase has seen the car hit the 402.6m mark in just under 11-seconds, so close to the fastest known one that’s been measured at 10.-seconds.
Take a look at the YouTube video from SA's top automotive channel that takes a closer look at this nicely modified A45 AMG and details the process to get it where it is today: Chasing the A45 AMG World Record - Here's what it takes to modify Merc's hottest hatch | Cars.co.za
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