Having read some pretty reasonable things in the latest batch of RS3 reviews, following the UK launch this month, I was a bit taken aback by the negativity of this piece by Matt Saunders for Autocar.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/CarReviews/...drive)/257814/
Actually it’s not so much a review as a hatchet-job, since he mentions no plus points about the car at all, confining himself to a virtual diatribe about its ride and handling on UK roads. There’s very little to go on in the article itself, so it’s also worth reading the comments for a fuller picture of his underlying feelings, beacuse, at one stage, he chimes in to defend himself from some readers attacking his (allegedly) eccentric language and says quite bluntly
Now I’ve read quite a few reviews of the RS3 and, while some have been extremely positive, a number, including Autocar’s last one, have been lukewarm but generally respectful. Yet I have never heard anyone who's driven it call it a “poor” car. It's worth remembering that when Autocar tested the RS3 in southern France in March, the driver at that time, while not uncritical, said that it "came close to greatness". I know UK roads are bad, but are they really so bad they can turn a car that comes close to greatness in France into a particularly poor one here?And why criticise the RS3 at all? Because having test driven it, I think it's a particularly poor, uninvolving and overpriced performance car.
At any event, I cannot remember seeing a review quite so severely (almost comically) negative about anything outside party politics (except maybe Apple fans criticisng Windows ). Saunders goes so far as to say:
we can’t help but conclude that this is one of the very last ways we’d spend £40,000 this summer in pursuit of a great driver’s car
and for his coup de grace
we’d advise any UK deposit-holder who’s been offered a premium for their place in the queue for an RS3 – a car which has apparently been sold out since the winter – to take the money and run