Audi's New 280bhp RS1 Will Be Stupid Fun

We’re massive fans of small cars with big power, and here’s another to drool over. Audi has given the green light to an RS-badged A1 with 280bhp, and it could hang on to a manual gearbox, too.

The four-wheel-drive RS1 is set to use the same 2.0-litre EA888 turbocharged petrol engine as the Golf GTI, Octavia vRS and a host of other performance-minded large VW Group cars, and it’s likely to be at least as fast as all of them.

Audi insiders see it as the spiritual successor to the slightly bonkers limited-production A1 quattro, which had four-wheel drive, 258bhp and the steering wheel on the left side only. Just 19 were sold in the UK, pretty much guaranteeing collector status.

It is being billed as a direct rival to the Mini John Cooper Works, which pushes out the same power and uses a similarly dinky platform.

No official images have yet been released by Audi, but the body styling of an RS1 will be more extreme than the current S1 (pictured), with its paltry 228bhp version of the EA888 four-pot.

As for performance we expect the extra 52bhp of the RS1 to knock a few tenths off the S1’s 5.8-second 0-62mph time, as well as smashing it into an electronic 155mph limiter. The car will arrive next year, but with a new A1 expected in 2018, the RS flagship is seen as a run-out experiment, testing the water for customer demand. With any luck it’ll catch on.