{"id":92325,"date":"2009-12-21T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-21T16:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autoblog.com\/2009\/12\/21\/review-2009-mtm-audi-a3-sportback-is-a-singular-sport-with-ut\/"},"modified":"2009-12-21T11:57:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-21T16:57:00","slug":"review-2009-mtm-audi-a3-sportback-is-a-singular-sport-with-utility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/92325","title":{"rendered":"Review: 2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback is a singular sport (with) utility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Filed under: Aftermarket<\/a>, Performance<\/a>, Europe<\/a>, Hatchback<\/a>, Audi<\/a>, Reviews<\/a><\/p>\n

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2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback – Click above for high-res image gallery<\/small><\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n

In the automotive world, price is increasingly a function of degrees. How’s that? Dial in a faster windscreen angle, aggressively rake the rear glass and – voilà! – you’ve just padded your margins to the tune of a few thousand bucks. Take a plain-jane sedan, hire some stylists to turn it into a “four-door coupe” with a racy greenhouse, and you can use the same mechanicals and still charge a mint. The same goes for crossovers – just steepen the backlight and you’re in the ducats. Not convinced? See the Mercedes-Benz CLS<\/a> and BMW X6<\/a> for field notes. <\/p>\n

MTM is planning on selling only 15 of these in the U.S.<\/strong><\/div>\n

We note all of this because we’re sure you’re going to look at the upright profile of this MTM Audi A3<\/a> Sportback and dismissively turn up your nose when you learn its pricetag is around $55,000. But if we lopped off a couple of doors or gave it a less formal roofline, we’d be willing to bet that its price would suddenly look a lot more palatable. All of which is understandable, really, as $55k is a lot of coin to be shelling out – especially considering that at a few shekels over $27k, a base A3 starts at roughly half the money.<\/p>\n

But shelve your bodystyle prejudices and bear with us for a moment. If you’re like us, you’ve looked longingly at a lot of what the Four-Ringed Wunder has been kicking out on its home continent – models like the RS6 Avant, TT-RS and S3. And unless you’ve got some seriously deep pockets, an inside man on the gray market and a relative who owes you a favor at the local DMV, you haven’t got a prayer of landing any such tasty treats here in the U.S. So while the folks at Motoren-Technik-Mayer <\/a>(MTM) can’t source you an assembly-line-fresh S3 for your middle-American driveway, they can build you a road-legal doppelganger, and as it turns out, that ain’t half bad.<\/p>\n

We’ve talked up the Audi A3’s virtues and vices before, so we’ll spare you the gab about how much we enjoy its well-resolved interior, grippy Quattro all-wheel drive, planted handling and surprising utility. We’ve also not been shy in mentioning how its price tag can get disastrously dear with just a brief once-over of Audi’s options list – and that’s before<\/span> handing it over to a tuner like MTM. But enough with the apologies – ride along with us past the jump to see if this hot hatch is full of excuses… or full of win.<\/p>\n

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Gallery: Review: 2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Photos by <\/small><\/strong><\/em>Chris Paukert \/ <\/small><\/strong><\/em>Copyright (C)2009 Weblogs, Inc.<\/small><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Continue reading Review: 2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback is a singular sport (with) utility<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Review: 2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback is a singular sport (with) utility<\/a> originally appeared on Autoblog<\/a> on Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Permalink<\/a> | Email this<\/a> | Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Filed under: Aftermarket, Performance, Europe, Hatchback, Audi, Reviews 2009 MTM Audi A3 Sportback – Click above for high-res image gallery In the automotive world, price is increasingly a function of degrees. How’s that? Dial in a faster windscreen angle, aggressively rake the rear glass and – voilà! – you’ve just padded your margins to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}