Question of the Week: is the A45 an all-time hot hatch great?

After two generations of giving its littlest product a bootful of power and Valerian Steel-like canards, Mercedes announced last week that it's vetoing the A45 due to dwindling interest. But will you miss it? Here’s a quick refresher to remind you of what’s leaving us.

The first generation landed in 2013 and was one of the founding members of the ‘new-school’ of hot hatches: turbocharged monsters firing out supercar-baiting numbers and price tags unheard of in this car class.

Its engine - a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pot - produced a peak of 376bhp and 350lb ft in the 2015 facelift. It meant 0-62mph in 4.2s and 168mph flat-out with the Driver’s Pack option applied. Alarming.

Its successor arrived in early 2019, and took the numbers game even further: currently sitting at 415bhp and 369lb ft with the ‘S’ variant. 0-62? Just 3.9s... in a car weighing almost 1.7 tonnes. Bloody alarming.

And it’s devastatingly quick around the twisty bits too, thanks to a mechanical slip differential and sophisticated clutch packs that can redistribute power, both underpinned by Merc’s 4MATIC all-wheel drive system. It’s the engineering pinnacle of hot hatchery… but is it an all-time great? If so, where does it rank among its peers?

Post your thoughts below, and we’ll round up the very best of them in the usual Friday post. Go go go!