Are buyers really concerned with how fast a CS-S is?
I would have thought it was down to the improvement in the feedback from the chassis and maybe a little playfulness and adjustability on the throttle, involving you in the driving process.
Most 4wd cars I have driven on the road are mostly neutral up to and beyond the legal limit that you can only start to have fun on track in a large space. There are advantages of traction with 4wd, normally at the expense of fun in my experience.
Totally agreed. The strongest point/appeal of the car is not outright speed, 300 bhp is hardly record-breaking figures by today's standards. The chassis, turn-in, agility and feed-back are what it's about and you can appreciate all that from the very first turn you take at, what normally would be, punishing speed.
Test-drove an R twice, I didn't feel I was playing any part when driving below the limit and when I actually got there the tolerances were pretty minor. You are either going too fast and will pay for it, or fast enough for the car to turn without much effort (but slower compared to a more focused, sportier alternative). S3 was much worse.
Still it's quite impressing to see that when you floor it from 30mph+ (a speed that you'll be above 99% of the time unless hitting the drag-strip or going for midnight traffic light races
), it will embarass cars with 50-80bhp more.
Here's EVO's acceleration data from the last issue, I've put the CS on par with the Cupra. Only half a sec between CS/Cupra and CS-S and still faster than a Focus RS (and an A45 AMG which for the nominal 381 bhp must be the slowest car in acceleration/bhp ratio)
