Hello, sold my A45 AMG for a Clio 200t EDC LUX

[Tankclark]

Hello there, yesterday I handed the deposit over for this little
beast! Fun little car and quite practical aswell which is a bonus.
Had an M135i before moving onto a stage 1 A45 AMG that was extremely rapid but a little while ago the Mrs moved a lot closer to home with her job and I was doing about 3 miles a day in it, that and the fact we've decided we want a bigger house meant it was time to sell the merc.
Got a run of the mill focus but 5 months later I'm bored so we bought the Clio as a stop gap.

Heres the the cars in order of my ownership.

Mazda 3 MPS


Auto M135i, sounded great and went like stink but handling was a bit rowdy





and next was the A45 AMG, running about 410 bhp and 420 bhp with an MSL custom map it posted some serious times and gripped like anything, with the performance exhaust it also sounded epic like a group B rally car.







And and now the Clio!

 

[Chris]

Welcome along, quite the selection of cars, think you will miss a bit of oomph coming from them cars though lol.

 

[coendek]

why...........?

 

[Tankclark]

Went from doing around 20 miles per day to about 3 miles per day and also needed to liquidate some funds for a bigger house move.

 

[LiamRS197]

That A45 looks stunning! Agree with Chris though, don't think you'll feel the same trouser action as before. But nevertheless nice clio

 

[Tankclark]

Yes I know in a straight line it won't set the world alight, on the test drive the guy showed how to put it in race and then advised me to gun it up the road whilst looking at me with a face that said 'well what do you reckon!!' But it felt a little flat, most of my driving though is B road stuff so a little light point and squirt car like the Clio will do fine for me.
The A45 was pretty cool but the chances to ever use the power were limited to the odd idiot in a chavved up Type R trying it on and getting blown into the weeds which got boring.

 

[coendek]

Understand sir!

good call then!!

enjoy the car and have a great day!

 

[Deaks]

I'm just hear for the AMG - noice!

Good luck with the clio, we'll see how long that lasts

 

[Tankclark]

Lol hopefully longer than the rest, never had a car longer than a year! I'm thinking of maybe going for a GTR or C63 pp in a couple of years and keeping the Clio and turning it into a cup racer or something

 

[Jimmy]

Welcome to the forum. I like your car history, some serious motors there! As said, the Clio will be a different kind of fun, but a lot of fun either way enjoy!

 

[nutnutwelshman]

Welcome to the Family enjoy

 

[Matt W]

Very nice cars there, the clio will be great fun on the B roads

 

[Beany]

:welcome:

 

[CallorFold]

A45 looks superb. I'd have been tempted to look for a slightly older Megane RS for around a similar price point just to keep the power figures up, but obviously the Clio is a great car all the same

 

[chappers]

Nice AMG and definitely the best colour on the new Clio!

How do you find the gearchanges compared to the AMG?

 

[Yiannis197]

That merc's 0-60!!!! This is bloody supercar territory ffs!

Nice one mate, welcome along.

 

[Stephen]

That's one hell of a downgrade haha..
Decent enough reason for doing it though! I'll possibly selling my S3 in the next couple of months to free up for money for house..
If I sell the S3 (around 25k left on PCP) I can borrow around £60-70k more...

 

[Tankclark]

Yes we're are looking at adding at least 100k ontop of our current mortgage, a financial advisor said that due to the A45 being new it would show up as around 45k worth of debt and seriously affect the chances of getting a bigger mortgage, so it had to go. Great memories of it though but my last 6 cars have all been different makes and I'm not a fan boy of any car makes, the A45 for me is a box ticked so I wouldn't get another.

As for comparisons between the A45 and 200 well they are obviously pretty different animals, I won't even bother with straightline pace I believe the Clio is nearly twice as slow to 100 mph but that's not what I bought it for.
Grip out of corners again the A45 holds all the cards, dual clutch gearboxes? The A45's is a lot quicker at changing than the Clio, on downshifts I never experienced the delays some journalists experienced but merc were quite regularly bringing out revised software for them so perhaps mine was different. For gearboxes though the M135i ZF was better than the A45's in every way, much more intuitive about when you wanted to floor it, infact for tuning the M135i was also better than the A45, with no additional mods you can simply bolt on a pure stage 2 hybrid turbo on the M135i and you've got a 500 bhp car for about an extra £2,000

 

[onefourkrpm]

Was the M135i 'rowdy' in a good way or a bad way?

Had these pegged as a possible car for the future, a friend had a 120d with the ZF8 and even then it went well.

 

[Tankclark]

It was a great car the M135i had a few extras on it like M performance carbon interior, M performance exhaust, Mirrors, carbon fibre exhaust tips, steering wheel but still felt a little soft for me, it would body roll round corners and due to the fact that max torque kicked in under 2,000 rpm it would scrabble for grip in anything other than perfect conditions, some called it fun but I found it frustrating whee spinning in the wet sometimes in a straight line at 60 mph!
Going to the A45 after the car felt much more stable and focused and the 4WD was brilliant, the M135i wouldn't have got near it on a damp B road nor would much else TBH.
The best way I could describe the M135i and A45 was that you could easily tell the BMW wasn't a full fat M car from the interior to lack of diff and soft suspension, whereas the A45 you were under no illusions it was a full fat AMG from the hand assembled engine with builders name on to the SLS supercar gearbox. I'd happily own both again though