2020 Mercedes-AMG A45 vs. BMW M2 Competition Acceleration Comparison

Before the A45 arrived about seven years ago, the hot hatch segment was a relaxed rivalry between your 200-ish hp Golf, Focus or Megane. Sure, there was always the RS3, but it was treated with a sort of neglect, as you would a spoiled child asking for something unreasonable.

Only a few thousand people wanted to pay that kind of money for a hatchback because they could have a cool Porsche sports car instead. However, the A45 changed everything, proving that with insane 2-liter technology and AWD, you could launch really, really, really fast. Did we say really?

So is the new one still faster than a real sports car? That's a very interesting question, given how technology has progressed. Adding partial electrification, Mercedes-AMG was able to extract as much as 421 hp and 500 Nm of torque out of its new 2-liter engine.

It's kind of a crazy number, which adds up to something like 100+ hp per cylinder. But if you like to have more than four of them, there's always the BMW M2 Competition. This slightly updated model has stolen the 3-liter bi-turbo setup from the M4. Its horsepower output is slightly lower somehow, 410, but torque sits at 550 Nm.

Some like the rocket launch of an AWD hatch while others prefer a natural RWD-only setup. The only way to settle this is with an acceleration test, which AutoTopNL has kindly put together. And the gap turns out to be much bigger than we thought, almost 20 clicks in favor of the A45 by the time it's reached 100 km/h. What's strange is that the M2 never fully catches up, even by 250 km/h. So you're probably going to lose every drag race.