Mercedes-Benz: the serious German luxury brand for serious important people, winning Formula One teams and high-end supercars. Now, also, bright-yellow hot hatchbacks that look like Pokémon and have big ridiculous wings. Meet the 2019 Mercedes-AMG A35, the baby hot hatch from Benz.
We saw some of this car yesterday when a few early shots leaked out, but here’s the rest of it. And while it’s almost certainly not coming to the U.S., I have to say I’m a fan. It’s fun when the folks at Benz let their hair down a little bit.
Based on the new and heavily improved A-Class compact, the AMG A35 gets a 306 horsepower, 2.0-liter twin-scroll turbo four. Power runs to all four wheels via a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox. Called “true AMG for the Hot Hatch stage!,” exclamation mark and all, it’ll do zero to 60 mph in just 4.7 seconds. Mercedes says it has 295 lb-ft of torque, too, which is available at max from just 3,000 rpm.
Compared to the old A-Class AMG—which had the same guts as the CLA45 AMG sedan we did get in the U.S.—Mercedes says this new car is based on an all-new compact platform that’s aimed at being both stiffer and more comfortable than the outgoing car. Here it has improvements like a strengthened front body section, a bolted aluminum plate under the engine for more torsional stiffness and two new diagonal braces up front as well.
There’s other goodies like adaptive dampers, an adjustable exhaust, new touch control buttons in the steering wheel that let you slide through various menu functions and a lap timer with a track data recording built-in. And thanks to GPS, it knows when you’re on track and can display maps for “well-known race tracks” like the Nürburgring or Spa Francorchamps.
The car can distribute up to half its power to the rear wheels, and it has a new “Slippery” drive mode for bad weather situations. Perhaps most important of all, it has “AMG DYNAMICS,” all caps. What the shit is AMG DYNAMICS, you ask? Well! I’ll let Benz tell you:
The different manifestations of AMG DYNAMICS are called “Basic” and “Advanced”. The drive program selection indicated on the multimedia display shows the new AMG DYNAMICS symbol with the relevant additional term.
“Basic” is assigned to the “Slippery” and “Comfort” drive programs. Here the A 35 4MATIC demonstrates exceptionally stable handling characteristics with high yaw damping.
“Advanced” is activated in the programs “Sport” and “Sport+”. The A 35 4MATIC remains neutrally balanced. The lower yaw damping, lower steering angle requirement and enhanced agility support dynamic manoeuvres such as driving on winding country roads.
In the “Individual” drive program the driver can set the AMG DYNAMICS levels individually.
I don’t know how I’ve gone this many years without AMG DYNAMICS in my life.
Here’s a ton of photos of this ridiculous little bastard. I love it.