2024 Audi RS3 Review: A Modern Rally Car Worth Every Penny
Once upon a time, in the years when I worked a dreary office job before committing to the nonstop international sleep deprivation experiment of automotive journalism, I bought a car brand-spankin’-new from the dealership. At the time, spending $36,000 or so on a 2016 Audi A3 2.0T Quattro seemed entirely reasonable. After all, I had a steady paycheck, plenty of vacation days for ski trips, and another manual sports car to play with on the weekends.
But where the base A3 2.0T fit into my budget, I always wondered about the much more expensive and desirable RS3. That barking five-cylinder engine, harkening back to the earliest days of Quattro rally dominance, seemed perfect to shoehorn into the compact four-door chassis. As I got to know the A3 better, the prospect only sounded more appealing, too, because — as peppy as the little turbo-four and Haldex-based AWD drove — the car simply begged for a whole lot more power.
This spring in Los Angeles, that erstwhile suspicion finally came to fruition when Audi loaned me a 2024 RS3 for a week of daily driving, highway commuting, and canyon carving. And unfortunately, I can now confirm that I should’ve bought an RS3 when I had the time and money to do so—though in reality, the new RS3’s technology, introduced steadily over the years since I bought my A3 in 2016, takes the concept of rally heritage and daily drivability in a compact sport sedan to a whole new level.
The 2024 RS3 is the best of classic Audi in a grin-inducing sports sedan
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