Quattro all-wheel drive, 400 horsepower, a taste of luxury, and a five-cylinder engine is basically all that went into the new Audi RS3 to make it an excellent sports sedan. However, now that the car has been available in the United States for almost a year, Audi tuning shops have been able to coax massive amounts of power out of its 2.5-liter TFSI motor.
Alabama-based Volkswagen tuner APR’s YouTube channel uploaded a video of one of its most powerful RS3 builds yet running consistent 9.9-second quarter-mile times. According to the description, owner Keith Brantley performed eight quarter-mile passes under 10 seconds, the fastest of which was a 9.83-second run at 144 mph. For reference, Dodge claims that the Challenger SRT Demon, the current darling of the quarter-mile strip, can do it in 9.54 seconds, but most owners have recorded similar times to the RS3.
To be clear, Brantley’s build is nothing like the APR-tuned RS3 that performed a 10.55-second run with a simple software upgrade. This car apparently makes more than 600 wheel horsepower thanks to engine control unit-transmission control unit software tuned for E85 Ethanol fuel, plus a new turbocharger, intake, exhaust, intercooler, fueling system, seat delete, and drag radial tires. In Volkswagen-speak, we’d classify this setup as Stage 3-plus, which could easily add up to the difference between the RS3’s price and that of the Demon.
The description does mention that this build is mostly a way to stress-test APR’s upcoming performance parts and most of these parts won’t be available, although software modifications for the RS3 will be available sometime this year.
Which would you pick as your drag racer of choice , APR-tuned RS3 or Dodge Demon? We’d love to see a drag race between both.
