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Audi RS3 Sedan coming to America with over 400 hp?

The Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG is a fast, competent car. It's significantly sharper than the Audi S3, and it should be, since its starting price is around $7,000 more. Still, getting walloped by the higher-performing CLA45 AMG must irk some people at Audi, we'd think, which might explain why there are rumors that the S3's big brother is coming to town. Yes, reports are popping up from an Audi of America employee that the Audi RS3 would transition from its Euro-market Sportback body style to a more conventional four-door, and that its styling would be updated in the process. Oh, and it'll have a 400-plus-horsepower, 2.5-liter, five-cylinder turbo with which to bash the four-cylinder AMG. The report comes from Quattro World by way of CarScoops, and goes on to claim that Audi hallmarks like Quattro all-wheel drive and a seven-speed S-Tronic dual-clutch transmission will both be present. The new RS3 Sedan would arrive on US shores in 2017 as a 2018 model, with prices starting between $55,000 and $60,000. That should make Mercedes-AMG very nervous – the CLA45 may start around $50,000, but getting it past the $60,000-range is simple (your author was driving a nearly $68,000 CLA45 just last month, for example). Naturally, we have a call in with Audi of America to see if there's any credence to this report. Stay tuned for updates. Related Video:

Brabus spools up new 850 6.0 Biturbo Coupe

With a 5.5-liter twin-turbo V8 cranking out 577 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque, the Mercedes-Benz S63 AMG Coupe is not the first vehicle we'd figure was in need of an upgrade. But the folks over at Brabus have evidently felt otherwise, bringing the 850 6.0 Biturbo Coupe to the Geneva Motor Show this year. Now the name might be slightly misleading, but not by much: the revving heart of this beast has been bored out to 5.9 liters and its output raised to 838 horsepower (by our standards). The modified engine also includes new turbochargers, breathing apparati and a remapped ECU to produce an even more prodigious 1,069 pound-feet of torque – although to keep the whole thing from going up in flames, Brabus has limited that last figure to 848 lb-ft. The top speed has been limited to "only" 217 miles per hour to keep the tires from melting, but it'll reach 62 mph from a standstill in just 3.5 seconds. That makes this bahn-stormer blisteringly fast, though the seven-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive system have been left largely unchanged. Naturally that's not the end of the story, as the Brabus 850 6.0 Biturbo Coupe also features a full new carbon-fiber aero kit, wheel options ranging from 18 inches to 22, a completely refitted interior and oh, so much more. Chances are you'll never see one sitting still, so you'll want to scope it out in the slideshow of live images from the floor of the Geneva Palexpo for a closer look. Related Video:

The mood at this year’s Paris Motor Show: Quiet

The Paris Motor Show, held every other year in the early fall, typically kicks off the annual cavalcade of automotive conclaves, one that traverses the globe between autumn and spring, introducing projective, conceptual and production-ready vehicle models to the international automotive press, automotive aficionados and a public hungry for news of our increasingly futuristic mobility enterprise. But this year, at the press preview days for the show, the grounds of the Porte de Versailles convention center felt a bit more sparsely populated than usual. This was not simply a subjective sensation, or one influenced by the center's atypically dispersed assemblage of seven discrete buildings, which tends to spread out the cars and the crowds. There were not only fewer new vehicles being premiered in Paris this year, there were fewer manufacturers there to display them. Major mainstream European OEM stalwarts such as Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Nissan and Volkswagen chose to sit out Paris this year, as did boutique manufacturers like Bentley, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. This is not simply based in some antipathy on the part of the German, British and Italian manufacturers toward the French market — though for a variety of historical and societal reasons that market may be more dominated by vehicles produced domestically than others. Rather, it is part of a larger trend in the industry. Last year, Mercedes-Benz announced that it would not be participating in the flagship North American International Auto Show in 2019 — and that it might not return. Other brands including Jaguar/Land Rover, Audi, Porsche, Mazda and nearly every exotic carmaker have also departed the Detroit show. Some of these brands will still appear in the city in which the show is taking place, and host an event offsite, to capitalize on the presence of a large number of reporters in attendance. And even brands that do have a presence at the show have shifted their vehicle introductions to the days before the official press opening in an attempt to stand out from the crowd. In many ways, this makes sense. With an expanding number of automakers, with diversification and niche-ification of models and with wholesale shifts that necessitate the introduction of EV or autonomous sub-brands, there is a growing sense that, with everyone shouting at the same time, no one can be heard.