The modern Mercedes-AMG A45 has a handful of things in common with the 1987 Lancia Delta HF Integrale 8v. You won’t need to interrogate their technical specifications too closely to work it out. Four-wheel drive, turbocharged four-cylinder engines, five doors – that sort of thing. Beyond those fuzzy and trivial commonalities, though, there is a connection between them that is clear and meaningful. But we’ll get on to that later.
While the fastest high performance hatchbacks can trace their origins back to the early days of the hot hatch (think VW Golf GTI Mk1, Peugeot 205 GTi et al), there was a point in time when one species became two and their journeys diverged. The hot hatch continued on its merry course while the super-hatch unfurled itself and set off on its own, boasting more power, bigger dimensions, loftier price tags and four driven wheels. That moment in time was 1987.
The Best Super Hot Hatches
- Lancia Delta HF Integrale 8v
- Ford Focus RS – a lightweight route
- Audi S3 - Super Hatches Go Premium
- Mercedes-AMG A45 Ups the Ante
- Hyundai Ioniq 5 Embraces Electricity
Lancia Delta HF Integrale 8v
There had been fast versions of this set-square hatchback long before the Lancia Delta HF Integrale 8v, but the 1987 model had stacks of power and enormous box arches. It also trounced all comers in the World Rally Championship, all of which surely makes it the original super-hatch. With its arrival, a whole new breed of performance car came into being.
We should at this point address the handful of rally-derived performance hatchbacks that predated the Integrale 8v, because Group B homologation specials like the road-going Peugeot 205 T16 and the MG Metro 6R4 arrived years before the Lancia and were even more powerful. But one of the fundamental properties of any sort of hot hatch is everyday usability. Lacking any boot space or even a rear bench – two of the more mundane consequences of relocating the engine from between the front wheels to behind the front seats – the 205 T16 and Metro 6R4 simply weren’t hot hatches. They were more like supercars.
In the early 1990s the Ford Escort RS Cosworth (pictured, above) and Nissan Pulsar GTI-R – cars that also owed their existence to rallying – furthered the super-hatch genre with more power, more technology and, in the case of the Cosworth, an awful lot more rear wing.
Ford Focus RS – a lightweight route
Just as the super-hatch diverged from the hot hatch in the late Eighties, there was a splintering of the super-hatch genre somewhere around the turn of the century. The 2001 Ford Focus RS was a super-hatch to its core, impressively powerful with 212bhp and blisteringly fast because of it, and so loaded up with motorsport-derived hardware like Sachs dampers, Brembo brakes, a Quaife limited-slip differential, Recaro seats and lightweight OZ wheels that it seems to have been designed not for the public highway, but the racetrack.
It was even built on a dedicated production line. But it wasn’t four-wheel drive. It therefore doesn’t have any place this timeline, but it was without question the original front-wheel-drive super-hatch, the car that paved the way for every Renaultsport Megane and pared-back VW Golf GTI Clubsport that would follow. In its own way, the Focus RS was a pioneer.
Audi S3 - Super Hatches Go Premium
But to continue with our timeline we must step back to 1999 and the arrival of the first Audi S3 (above). It had the power and the four-wheel-drive system to do its super-hatch forebears justice, but what’s really significant about the S3 is that it changed the course of the entire sub-genre for good.
No longer would super-hatches be derived from rally cars or built only for speed. They would be civilised, refined and mature, and they would have badge appeal and all of the infotainment and communications technology that you’d expect of a premium car. They were far more grown up than the earliest super-hatches, but they were faster, too.
The 2002 Volkswagen Golf R32 is significant because it introduced the dual-clutch gearbox to the sector, an item of hardware that would quickly become ubiquitous among super-hatches. Four years later the original Audi RS3 elevated power outputs far beyond 300bhp (335bhp to be exact) and retail prices to within a whisker of £40,000.
Mercedes-AMG A45 Ups the Ante
And so we arrive at the here and now, with the arrival of the 2019 Mercedes-AMG A45 having set a new standard with 416bhp and a 0-62mph time of only 3.9 seconds. For context, that's fractionally more than the original Audi R8 supercar. Cross-country, the all-wheel-drive A-Class is one of the quickest vehicles available at any price, not to mention tremendously good fun thanks to sensational grip and and involving chassis.
Needless to say, the latest A45 AMG is faster than the 1987 Lancia Delta HF Integrale 8v by an order of magnitude and far more luxurious with it. However, it is equally true that the Mercedes owes its entire existence to that groundbreaking Italian super-hatch.
Hyundai Embraces Electricity
The arrival of electric power has been slow to translate into a compelling EV super-hatch, but the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is a pretty feisty contender. Its 641bhp makes it an inevitably rapid vehicle, and moves the hot hatch game into another realm of performance. But what really sets the Ioniq 5 N apart from other fast EVs is the way it combines engaging handling and surprisingly entertaining 'fake' gearshifts and engine noises to create one of the most entertaining electric cars yet produced.