Photo: Audi
Audi put up a bunch of 2020 model year prices on its German website, and the S3 Cabriolet was one of the few that grabbed our attention. Why? The base price is way too high for what you're getting.
We've noticed a whole bunch of German cars that has gone up in price, probably due to taxes on emissions. In some cases, we're glad they're still available, but the S3 Cabriolet doesn't deserve to be on that list.
It's a niche within a niche, one which Audi was supposed to leave many years ago but probably can't due to worker unions and such. Currently, the model is going for 53,000 euros, but we traced back our original article about the car to 2014, when it stickered for 48,500, which suggests an increase of about 1% each year. Heck, you can get a new A6 for that kind of money.
The S3 Cabriolet is the only 4-seat convertible with a performance engine based on a front-drive platform. But that's not necessarily a good thing. Opel had to give up on the Cascada, as did VW on the Beetle, Eos and Golf 6 Cabrio.
With a 300 horsepower 2-liter engine, it's able to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.2 seconds. But the real problem is the weight: currently rated at 1,740kg. It's not very big, but you need to add a lot of stuff to make a convertible chassis that carries four people yet can handle 400 Nm of twist. Somehow, the Skoda Kodiaq RS seems like a reasonably sized and price thing, which by the way is also based on the MQB.
All this weight is bad for the economy, which can go as high as 9.1 liters around town. But even if it was as kind to the environment as the Toyota Prius, we still wouldn't recommend the 200 Audi S3 Cabrio.
It's a niche within a niche, one which Audi was supposed to leave many years ago but probably can't due to worker unions and such. Currently, the model is going for 53,000 euros, but we traced back our original article about the car to 2014, when it stickered for 48,500, which suggests an increase of about 1% each year. Heck, you can get a new A6 for that kind of money.
The S3 Cabriolet is the only 4-seat convertible with a performance engine based on a front-drive platform. But that's not necessarily a good thing. Opel had to give up on the Cascada, as did VW on the Beetle, Eos and Golf 6 Cabrio.
With a 300 horsepower 2-liter engine, it's able to go from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.2 seconds. But the real problem is the weight: currently rated at 1,740kg. It's not very big, but you need to add a lot of stuff to make a convertible chassis that carries four people yet can handle 400 Nm of twist. Somehow, the Skoda Kodiaq RS seems like a reasonably sized and price thing, which by the way is also based on the MQB.
All this weight is bad for the economy, which can go as high as 9.1 liters around town. But even if it was as kind to the environment as the Toyota Prius, we still wouldn't recommend the 200 Audi S3 Cabrio.
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