Audi RS Q3 Sportback review: oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

This is not a good car. This is not even a medium-rare, does-the-job kinda car. The Audi RS Q3 Sportback is a shocker.

Hang on, don’t I ask the questions first?

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. As you were.

So, in the same week as a brilliant new fast Audi…

Yep, saw that one coming. The new RS6 Avant has landed in the UK, and it’s everything we’d expect from Audi Sport – hugely pacey, grippy, refined and desirable. It’s also freakishly comfortable. A genius all-rounder.

Coincidentally it arrived at the Top Gear office to overlap with the new coupe version of the RS Q3. The £51,805 RS Q3 Sportback is also fast and grippy, but the good news stops dead there.

What’s wrong with it?

Let’s start with the ride. The (£58k as tested) RS Q3 Sportback Audi sent along was an interesting, relevant spec. The classic British buyer habits all ticked. Posher paint, 21-inch rims, and a smattering of interior tech. Crucially the money had been spent making the RS Q3 more photogenic(ish), and better at showing off to your mates. Not on making it better to drive.

This is a tall car with a short wheelbase that’s trying to be sporty, riding on 21-inch wheels. That adds up to ride quality that’s unacceptably jiggly and harsh. It doesn’t matter if you’re in town, cre-e-e-e-ping over a speed bump, on an open road, dogfighting with potholes, or simply running down the outside lane of the M4, braced for the expansion joints on the bridges. The RS Q3’s jarring, hideously taut ride is a conversation-stopper. A singalong song interrupter. Very effective at curbing your speed, at least.

You’re no stranger to putting up with a firm ride if the handling is a giggle…

Fair point. Cars like the Ford Fiesta ST and Mercedes-AMG E63 have been big Top Gear faves – and even won our best-of-the-year awards – despite riding like skateboards on a staircase. But that’s because what they give away in squidge, they give back in poise, agility and balance. They’re rock-hard, and yet you can tell when you’re asking for trouble. The RS Q3 is the worst of all worlds. The suspension’s made of petrified Jurassic wood, and yet in the corners, it feels numb and leaden. The steering’s frigid and distant whatever the modes.

There are modes?

Yes, but they don’t save the RS Q3 Sportback. Without £900 of adaptive suspension to ease off the unflinching ride, all they do is muck about with the dashboard graphics (admittedly, the retro Quattro-style tacho is cool), pour maple syrup into the steering rack, and espresso martini onto the powertrain’s circuit boards.

Surely the engine is a masterpiece?

Who the heck demanded 400bhp in a crossover? It's so… ungainly. Massively fast, of course, but to unlock this pace you’ve got to drive around the gaping chasms in the seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox’s processing power. The whole point of a DSG is imperceptible warp-shifts when you’re cracking on, but the RS Q3 slurs its changes and the kickdown refuses to acknowledge there’s 354lb ft of torque to call on.

The only solution is to take matters into your own hands with the cheap’n’nasty ribbed plastic paddles. Mind you, much of the cabin trim is a minefield of ‘how much money can we get away with saving here'. Except the snappy touchscreen. It's probably the best one going. The unsupportive seats on the other, erm, bum, have no place in a £50k super-SUV.

But the noise…

Active exhausts are on the legislative naughty step now, so Audi’s ‘done a Golf R’ and amplified the engine noise with a boombox inside. That makes sense in a Golf R or Cupra Leon, because the standard four-cylinder engines sound flat. But stuffing balled-up socks down the pants of a 2.5-litre five-cylinder is heinous. Fortunately you can turn off the amped-up soundtrack, in the touchscreen.

What’s this car actually good at?

Other than making other road users pity you / hate you / drive aggressively to make your day more miserable? Stumped, I'm afraid. It's fine on the motorway, but there are plenty of other head-turners that'll do a better job everywhere else for £50k. How about an Evoque? Or an M2 Competition?

There’s a whiff of half-arsedness here: that the engineers were so affronted by having to sign off the RS Q3 Sportback, they’ve not really tried their best. As opposed to say, a Porsche Macan or Alfa Stelvio, where the die-hards may well have not found their new project palatable, but still worked their socks off to make the result a success.

It’s like eating a canape you know’s been prepared in an industrial warehouse by someone who despises the consumer. It’s the engineering equivalent of doing a wet fart on the boss’s office chair after they’ve told you to stay late doing paperwork.

Ouch. You done?

It’s not just me. TG’s Teflon-coated ‘I love the cars you love to hate’ correspondent Rowan Horncastle spent a weekend in the RS Q3 and returned with opinions not publishable on a family website. Here’s what I could get away with passing on:

“It’s the ultimate 2020 marketing buzzword car: a fast, jacked-up, unnecessary micro coupe. It ticks enough boxes for people who don’t know about cars (quick in a straight line, cack faux warble, XXL exhausts, big wheels, expensive) making them think it’s a good car. Well done the marketing team.

You sit in a puddle of lag then get everything, but the gearbox doesn’t play ball. The ride is criminal, interior shoddy and it's child-like in its design – so chunky and inelegant. Doesn’t feel like there’s love, passion or excellence in it like the RS6. When you drive that you feel like the people behind it cared about it. They didn’t care about this.”

Double-ouch.

Don’t worry, it’s over. Be in no doubt – if you see one of these roar past you, skipping into mid-air as it encounters a pea-sized road-pimple, don’t give a pang of envy.

Just pray it doesn’t plough-understeer off the next roundabout, because anyone who drops fifty thousand pounds on one of these is unlikely to freely admit falling off the road was their fault. If you must have an Audi like this, get an SQ2. It's less offensive. Audi Sport can do so much better than this. RS6, anyone?

4/10

2480cc 5cyl turbo, 394bhp, 354lb ft
7spd DSG, AWD
0-62mph in 4.5sec, 155mph
58.5mpg, 202g/km CO2
1700kg