Audi RS3 Hire Sydney: Review, Specs and What It Is Really Like

The RS3 is the car for the reader who has watched a hundred videos of this engine and wants a weekend with the real thing. It is a compact Audi with a turbocharged five-cylinder, all-wheel drive that can steer the car from the rear axle, and a sprint time that embarrasses cars costing three times as much. It fits a city car park and it can be hired from 20 on a full licence. The car is confirmed by request, so tell us your dates and we will say plainly whether we can put one in front of you.

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Specifications

The figure to read first is the cylinder count. Five is an odd number for an engine in every
sense, and it is the reason this car sounds like nothing else at the price. The 3.8 seconds is
the second thing: a hatchback that will leave most of the coupes on this site standing at the
lights.

What It Is Actually Like in Sydney

The noise comes from the odd cylinder count

A five-cylinder fires in a 1-2-4-5-3 order, which means the exhaust pulses never settle into
the even beat of a four or the smoothness of a six. What you hear is a warble at idle that
hardens into a flat bark as the revs climb, and it is the same character Audi put in its rally
cars in the 1980s. Turbocharged engines usually lose their voice through the turbo. This one
keeps most of it, and with the exhaust in its louder setting the RS3 sounds bigger than a car
this size has any right to. Under the overpasses on the Cahill Expressway, or through the
Eastern Distributor with the windows down, it is the kind of sound people wind their own
windows down for.

The honest note is that Audi has to meet noise rules, so the loudest version of the car lives
in a drive mode you select rather than in the default. Leave it in comfort and the RS3 is a
quiet hatchback with a slightly lumpy idle. Put it in RS mode and the sound arrives with the
throttle response, the gearbox holds gears longer and the whole car wakes up.

Quattro that will steer with the rear wheels

Earlier RS3s were quick everywhere and a little inert, because the all-wheel-drive system
sent power forward first and only lent it to the rear when the fronts slipped. The 8Y changes
that with what Audi calls the RS Torque Splitter, a rear axle with a clutch pack on each side
that can push the whole of the rear axle's torque to the outside wheel in a corner. The
practical effect on a road like the Old Pacific Highway is that the car turns in, holds its
line and then tightens it under power instead of running wide, which is not something a
front-heavy hatch used to do.

There is a drift mode, RS Torque Rear, which sends everything rearward and lets the car
slide. On a public road it is a party trick with legal consequences and we would rather you
knew it existed than tried it. What the same hardware does at sensible speeds is make the car
feel light and adjustable in a way the numbers do not describe.

It is the right size for this city

Sydney's older suburbs were laid out before cars and it shows in the lanes of Paddington,
Balmain and Newtown, in the tight ramps under apartment blocks and in the width of a shopping
centre bay. A big performance car spends a lot of its weekend being steered gingerly through
those. The RS3 does not. It is an A3 in width and length, it parks where an ordinary hatch
parks, and it has a reversing camera and sensors at both ends. Nothing about using it as a
daily car for four days is awkward, which is the difference between a car you drive
everywhere and a car you take out once.

The cabin follows the same logic. The digital dash can be switched to an RS layout with a
central rev counter and shift lights, the sports seats hold you without being narrow, and the
controls are the ordinary Audi ones you will work out in a minute. Four adults fit. The middle
rear seat is for a child or a short trip.

Where to take it

The Bells Line of Road from Richmond over the mountains to Lithgow and back down the Great
Western Highway is a full day and the best mixed drive within reach of the city: fast open
sections, tight second-gear corners through the orchards near Bilpin, and long climbs where
the five-cylinder gets to work in the middle of its rev range. The Royal National Park is
shorter and closer, and the Sea Cliff Bridge at its southern end is the photograph you will
want. For an evening, the run out to Palm Beach along Barrenjoey Road and back over the
Wakehurst Parkway is an hour and a half of the car's character with the city lights at the
end.

Things You Should Know

You can hire it from 20, with a full licence

The RS3 sits in the Performance tier, where the minimum driver age is 20 rather than the 25
the exotics require. That is a deliberate line: it is a car built to be driven by people who
care about driving, and plenty of them are in their early twenties. What it does require is a
full, unrestricted licence. A provisional licence does not qualify at any age, partly because
the NSW rules for provisional drivers would bar a car with this much power per tonne anyway.
Named drivers under 25 carry Young Driver Cover as a separate line on the booking, and it is
shown before you pay rather than added afterwards.

The other half of that honesty is the car itself. A hatchback that reaches 100km/h in under
four seconds will be doing a licence-losing speed before you have finished thinking about it,
and the double-demerit weekends in this state are not theoretical. Point it at a road that
rewards it rather than the one outside your house, and remember that a fixed camera does not
care how good the car sounds.

It rides firmly, and it drinks 98

Adaptive dampers or not, this is a car on wide, low-profile tyres with a body built to
resist roll, and the concrete joints on the M5 and the patched surface of Parramatta Road come
through the seat. Passengers who expected an A3 will notice. It is not harsh, but it is never
soft, and on a long motorway run the noise from the tyres is the thing you tire of before the
seats do. Fuel is the other budget line. The five-cylinder wants premium 98-octane, and a day
on the Bells Line will empty a meaningful share of the tank. Bring it back at the level you
collected it and there is nothing to settle.

Wheel damage is the realistic risk

Low, wide rubber on 19-inch wheels sits close to every gutter in the city. The most common
thing that goes wrong on a car like this over a weekend is not an accident; it is a kerbed
rim on a tight reverse park or a sidewall cut on a pothole out past Richmond. The bond covers
the sensible version of that and the excess caps your exposure, with both figures stated on
the booking. If you scrape a wheel, tell us on the day. A photograph and a message at the time
is far easier for everyone than a surprise at handover.

Choosing the Trim

Sportback

The five-door hatch. It is the shorter of the two, the tailgate opens onto a usable boot
with the seats up and a big flat floor with them down, and it is the one to take if the
weekend involves a surfboard, a bike with the front wheel off or a pile of overnight bags for
four. It looks like what it is, a hot hatch, and some people want exactly that.

Sedan

Same engine, same drivetrain, same interior, with a boot lid and a longer tail. The sedan
reads as a small, serious performance car rather than a hatch with a wing, and it is the
version most people photograph. The boot is a slot rather than a hatch opening, so soft bags
rather than hard cases. Between the two the drive is indistinguishable, so choose on the
shape you want to walk up to and on what you need to carry.

Who Books This Car

Drivers in their twenties who grew up with this engine on a screen and want a weekend with
the real thing before they can justify owning one. Older enthusiasts who know the
five-cylinder story and want to hear it in a modern car. Anyone who wants a properly quick
car that fits a city car park and does not announce itself in the driveway until it is
started.

It is priced from $395 a day, which puts it under the Mustang and a long way under the
four-door M3 for a car that would keep pace with either on a tight road. The RS3 is confirmed
by request rather than kept on a lot. Send us your dates and the body style you want, we
check what we can source, and we tell you a plain yes or no before a dollar changes hands.