[johnnydad]

Horses of courses?

Evo had the M135i as a finalist in last year's ECOTY. It was preferred by the whole team against the A45AMG a couple of issues ago, Henry Catchpole ran one for 6 months and loved its all-round ability and it was even given a gong as the RWD standard in their AWD car article last month.

They've said all along that it's steering lacks a bit of feel, it's softly sprung and a little ragged near the limit as a result and that an LSD is an improvement that should be considered. These things are true.

In this article they've taken these hatches to Snowdonia - the roads are extremely narrow, very demanding and I would think still pretty slippery at the moment. On roads such as these, at the pace they may be travelling, I can quite see that an RS265 would be the weapon of choice. Presumably the VII Golf R is pretty good too. A very powerful, slightly softer RWD car would be tricky in that environment. And swapping between cars and driving hard is always going to weigh in favour of a harder, more communicative set-up.

That said, some of the prose is at odds with their previously glowing praise - saying it is so bad that it suggests BMW have not built a RWD car before was a bit much IMHO.