Someone explain this one to me.. why is the RS3 kinda slow?

Weight, gearing, transmission losses, driver as well as torque and bhp. All of them have an impact on speed, straight line or lap time. RS3 is a quick little car and most Scoobs are geared for performance up to 100-120mph in my experience. At a Brunty event I did couple of years back my RS4 was getting it's backside handed to it by Scoobs between 60-100mph. Over that I was pulling them in, over 130mph by a big margin.
 
Unless you live in the USA and hang out with Toretto 1/4 times won't be all importent to most drivers, its nice to have all the figures turn out the bets if your playing top trumps, but theres more to it than one or two numbers. The Ferrari F355 and the Honda NSX both took the same time to get to 60 and the Ferrari was 0.1 seconds faster in a 1/4 mile, ofc the NSX annihilated it round the nurburgring. Diff cars excell in diff areas its hard to setup a car to be the best at everything.
 

So Audi RS3 does 0-60mph in 4.4sec, 0-100mph in 11.7 and the 1/4mile in 13.6sec @ 103mph.

It has 335bhp, 4 wheel drive, and a DSG gear box.

Now without meaning to be boasting, why is it that my car, when it was rolling roaded at just under 330bhp, so less than the Audi, and with a manual gearbox etc managed the quarter mile in 12.9 seconds? Surely a 330bhp Impreza cannot be that much faster?

So my question really is, why is the Audi not quicker than it is? Both the 0-60 and the 0-100 are impressive, but yet the quarter mile seems slow for such a great engine and gearbox combo.

What's the deal? I tend to find this a lot, I see a lot of new cars that I would think are going to be quick, but in reality they never really seem to be that fast?

Quick answer is: You can't launch a DSG care anywhere near as hard as a manual car. Gear ratios make a huge difference on something like 1/4 mile as does having a propper 4wd system for launches.

A remap on an RS3 would make your car in it's current form look like you have left your handbrake on.
 
He's not calling the car slow outright though, he's just confused why it seems to just suddenly run out of puff so extremely that it's apparently taking 1.9 seconds to accelerate from 100mph to 103mph and his lower powered, manual, also 4WD drive car that was similar/slower off the line, manages a 1/4 mile time 0.7s faster.

For a car as quick as an RS3, that doesn't add up, i'm sure you'd agree.

Looking at the numbers like that, i'd be inclined to think something was amiss with AutoExpress' timing set up though, that's just daft really. 2 seconds to accelerate 3mph like that? Just seems wrong really.

Exactly this. I'm not sat here boasting about my car being faster, I'm using it as a comparison, because I genuinely would have thought that the RS3 would be much quicker, given it's credentials. Not specifically quicker than my car, but quicker on the whole.

Either Autoexpress have got the quarter mile times wrong, or something somewhere is wrong with the figures. A car doing 0-100 in 11.7sec should IMO be crossing the line in the 12 second area?

I don't see what the point of the "jap crap" comments are, nor the "you've left your handbrake on" after remap either. I enjoy my car, and it's fast, so using it as a comparison is wrong why? I've not once said my car is better than the RS3 or even the 1M, but what I am saying is that I expected, given my performance figures for my power, a much better performance from something that also has 4 wheel drive, but has a DSG gearbox which is much quicker than I am at changing manual gears and am asking what could be the reason for it being so relatively slow. The RS3 is not a slow car by any means, in fact, I really really like them, and hence was watching videos of them. My question was why is it not faster given what it has as an advantage over my car.
 
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Not if the initial launch is not that great (DSG) all the 11.7 mean is seriously quick once rolling. 1/4 miles are all about the launch. Over a 1/2 mile I would expect you car would get destroyed.
 
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