Mercedes compact car lineup to feature cheaper variants with less power

From a motoring journalist’s point of view, it never made any sense for Mercedes-AMG not to have cheaper and less powerful variants of the A45 for aficionados who desire less sporty power.

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Thanks to AMG’s boss, Tobias Moers, for reading my mind. Tobias has announced that the next generation of the A45 will be joined by cheaper variants with less power.

Following in the footsteps of the C43 and E43 models, Tobias did not disclose the naming strategy set to be implemented by these lesser models, mentioning only the Affalterbach-based division “will complement our successful 45 models with two versions like we do with our larger cars”.

He went on to specify the recently introduced Concept A Sedan will spawn a production version that will have both an A45-badged version and the new “AMG Lite” flavour carrying a lower starting price.

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The announcement concerning a two-tier AMG model strategy for the compact cars doesn’t come as a massive surprise, considering that nowadays there’s a big gap between the flagship A45 and the version right below it.

Indeed, the A45 has 280kW, whereas the A250 Sport 4Matic provides only 160kW. Logic tells us the new AMG model will likely have somewhere in the region of 223kW to go after the Audi S3.