Mercedes-AMG A45 Final Edition: farewell to the world’s wildest hot hatch

The world’s most powerful hot hatch is gone. Thank goodness. So, what exactly did that whole episode teach us?

If you missed the news, Mercedes has unveiled the AMG A45 ‘Final Edition’. Carmakers do not give a model that name unless only a few months of production capacity remain for an ageing car and they need to shift the last units before they go yellow-brown and soft, like an avocado left at the back of the fruit bowl.

Oddly, this does not mark the end of Benz hot hatches. The less unhinged A35 will remain on sale, as its comparatively modest 306bhp makes its still-bonkers engine easier to usher through the next batch of environmental tests and emissions forms.

Mercedes-AMG A45 S: absurd power from an A-Class

The A45 S, however, was a snarling, giggling lunatic in a full straitjacket. EVs have so thoroughly distorted our idea of what counts as a powerful ‘normal’ car - basic Volvos now offer more than 400bhp, for goodness’ sake - that it is easy to overlook quite how preposterous the A45 S really was.

Introduced in 2017, the second-generation version extracted 415bhp from a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder. This was a mass-produced engine, covered by a warranty and capable of travelling more than fifty yards between major services. It was not made by an unheard-of, overconfident start-up or a race team with limitless funds. It came from Mercedes-flippin-Benz: conventional, buttoned-up, the Times newspaper of carmakers.

Its tiny but formidable engine was not the only source of crackling, fizzing, barely restrained aggression. For no discernible reason whatsoever, the cockpit displays could be set to show three separate rev counters at the same time. Drift Mode employed sophisticated clutch packs to fling the car sideways, too. I have never watched another car annihilate a set of four tyres so quickly.

During a twin test we filmed with the new Audi RS3, the AMG had to head home before the end. Its drivetrain was committing atrocities against Michelin, tearing chunks of rubber the size of Lego bricks from the tyres. It was an extraordinary thing to witness.

And this was an A-Class. Mercedes originally conceived its entry-level model as an aerodynamic, space-efficient, crash-safe box for sensible people who wore rimless glasses. Then one rolled over while avoiding an invisible elk, so Mercedes reconsidered the formula, built a Golf rival, fitted something akin to a Saturn V rocket beneath the bonnet, and packed the cabin with all the ambient lighting on the Vegas strip. The A45 was wonderfully incongruous. It had no business making sense.

Why the AMG A45 made no sense - and that was the point

Whenever I spotted one - after first making sure it was not the near-identical A35 - I felt an expanding sense of admiration. Its owner had apparently decided, “no, I don’t want a used BMW M3 or C63 Estate. I don’t want a bargain Audi R8 or a hoonable Jaguar F-Type. I want to spend north of £55,000 on an estate agent’s hatchback with more power than a Ferrari 360, yanked out of an droney engine that would fit in a suitcase”.

It recalled the brief, glorious period in the early 2000s when Mitsubishi and Subaru/Prodrive were coaxing four hundred big ones from rally-derived four-cylinder engines.

Naturally, the A45 S was never the world’s most rounded hot hatch. Its ride was offensively firm, it carried a fair bit of weight, and dropping out of boost took so long that your family might have reported you missing.

A sensible driver could cover fifty yards in a Honda Civic Type R and recognise it as a sharper, more genuine driver’s car. For effortless, all-weather point-and-squirt pace, an Audi S3 or VW Golf R offered much the same solution for less money.

Yet I will miss the A45. I will miss the “why the heck not?” mentality that created it: the sort of ‘eff around, find out’ philosophy responsible for its three distinct turbo-cooling systems, and for AMG rotating the engine by 180 degrees from the standard A-Class layout to provide the turbo with extra room and air.

Yes, it was overcomplicated and costly to operate. Still, TopGear.com ran one for six months and it never became tiresome.

The A45 engine’s unfortunate C63 legacy

It is also a pity that this extraordinary engine has had its reputation damaged - not through unreliability or a lack of performance, but because Mercedes installed it in the wrong model. The riotous, laggy, hornets’-nest nature that was so central to the A45 did not suit the C63, with its fabled V8 heritage. The resulting hybrid complexity and extra mass left the AMG C-Class merely a shadow of its former self, and sales went flat. Its life was curtailed well before the A45’s...

Mercedes has now announced that the latest ‘45’ will be a CLA-shaped, 2.3-tonne EV producing almost 680bhp. With Drift Mode and an army of binary-code tricks and features, it will recreate plenty of the A45’s loutish conduct when suitably provoked.

Still, you will always know that the soundtrack entering the cabin is artificial. The seats shake because their cushions are motorised. This is an entirely different form of engineering, and although I would never have spent my own money on an A45, I will miss the previous kind. Just me?