Pothole rains on pocket rocket Mercedes-AMG A45’s parade

Earlier this year, as part of their Mercedes-AMG Performance Tour, Mercedes-Benz South Africa debuted a few of their compact AMG offerings in a perfect high-speed environment, the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit.

It is a fast and flowing track with good runoff areas and a further safety net of advanced driving instructors and highly qualified paramedics on hand as you would expect. But it was perfect because it also has one of the most valuable of all commodities these days after electricity … smooth tar.

This statement will become a whole lot clearer just now. Here The Citizen Motoring is, behind the wheel of a very snappy Mercedes-AMG A45 S 4MATIC+. Mine for five full days. Mine to enjoy. It’s mine to go and do high-speed testing with. It’s my job and I am living my best life. And to make things even better, it is a very exclusive AMG Street Style Edition model.

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Mercedes-AMG looks the part

Being an AMG Street Style Edition means that subtle is no longer even a thought. This A45 features paintwork in mountain grey magno and decals with colour gradient in black/matt anthracite and highlights in fluorescent orange.

The interior offers AMG Performance seats with orange topstitching and steering wheel in black. Then there are also specific trim elements and AMG door sill panels with “AMG” lettering illuminated in red.

And if this isn’t enough exclusivity for you, you also get matching matt black AMG wheels, AMG Night Package & AMG Night Package II and AMG Aerodynamics Package thrown in to bring the price of the standard version that retails for R1 397 793, up to a full house price of R1 695 903. Now, before you start ranting and raving, I can assure you that a fully specced Audi RS 3 or BMW M2 will land you in the same ballpark. Fast premium cars cost premium money!

The competition

With the pricing and exclusive styling part of my evaluation ticked off, I was now only interested in heading off to Gerotek with the Mercedes-AMG A45 S. To go and play with this razor-sharp hot hatch and see what it could do against the likes of Audi’s table topping, sub-four second Audi RS 3 and give me some data to work with for when I test BMW’s new M2 in a few days’ time. Did I care for revised front headlamps and a round AMG emblem instead of the Mercedes-Benz star? No. I had the show and now it was time to experience the go.

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A 310 kW/500 Nm 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine boosting 2.1 bar running down to all four wheels and a claimed 0 to 100 km/h time of just 3.9 seconds was what this story was going to be all about.

Remember me bragging about living my best life? Well, on my way out to Gerotek, I managed to just clip the edge of a pothole hiding in the dark. It pinched the Mercedes-AMG A45 S’s front left tyre, which started to open it up.

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Damned if we do, damned if we don’t

I was faced with two choices. Call the people at Mercedes-AMG and admit to hitting a pothole and of course missing out on my chance to get my test data. Or I could take a chance with getting the data and doing the high-speed stuff. But then barrel rolling the car when the tyre popped and now having to make the same call from a hospital bed or via John Edwards.

Since it would seem like every time I do my own stunts at Gerotek, things do not go as planned for me, or the car, or even for Fred the guinea fowl this one time. I chose to stand down and save myself the agony of having to try to explain. And skip the insurance paperwork for an entire car, but only for a damaged tyre.

There will be other test days, but this day was over for the Mercedes-AMG A45 S, and I had nothing more to add.