AUDI's A3 saloon came slightly out of left field from the German car maker - who would want a slightly shrunken A4?

While the car may have been built to satisfy demand for traditional three-box design cars in places like China, in fact it was great to drive and - to me, at least - preferable to the A4 in most situations.

Now, Audi has added an S3 version of the saloon to the range - think hot hatch, but with four doors ¦ and a boot.

At the heart of the car is a brand new long stroke 2.0 TFSI engine, which pumps out 300ps but also manages a claimed 40.9mpg.

There's no mistaking that it's a quick car, with 0-62mph taking only 4.9 seconds and on to an electronically-limited top speed of 155mph.

It has Audi's famous quattro all-wheel drive system, and feeds the power into it through six-speed manual or -tronic gearboxes.

Although only a four-cylinder engine, it delivers a satisfying growl reminiscent of some of its bigger brethren, like the S5.

Choose the fire-engine red paintwork and you'll be driving a car that shouts out for attention.

On the road, it boasts a magnetic ride system as standard, which uses a blend of physics and witchcraft to stiffen up the suspension and tighten cornering attitude to order.

The S3 also has the latest version of Audi's electronic steering system. I've found this inclined to be vague in the past but the new system has ironed out some of the bugs and the steering doesn't lose its weighting for a moment in the middle of a corner, as could occasionally happen before.

The options list is a long one, and includes a high emphasis on the latest navigation and even social media applications, from Google Earth and Street View to Facebook and Twitter (with text-to-speech functions, hopefully to avoid drivers becoming too distracted by pictures of cats).

The S3 Saloon is priced from £33,240 on the road for the manual gearbox version, while the S-tronic starts at £34,720.