Can BMW's £50k sports coupé beat the Audi RS3? – car pictures of the week

reviews30 Jul 2026By AutoHive Staff

Audi RS3 and BMW M240

There was a time when £50k was enough to buy all manner of performance cars – pretty much any hot hatch you’d care to mention, right up to super saloons and purpose-built mid-engined sports cars. Sadly, things are a little different in 2026. The affordable petrol hot hatch has all but disappeared, cheap sports cars are no more, and what’s left has soared in price.

So, what does £50k buy you today? BMW’s rather appealing M240. It may be badged as a junior M car, but its spec sheet reads like that of a true performance product, with a 387bhp straight-six, four-wheel drive and a 4.3sec 0-62mph time. It’s a coupé that punches above its weight, but does that mean it can take on one of the best hot hatches of the moment – Audi’s £62k, 394bhp RS3? To find out, we pit them against each other in the latest issue of evo. To read the full test, pick up a copy of evo 348 in-store or online.

BMW M240i review – a great value sports car, but better than a proper hot hatch?

All things being equal, you’d expect a sports coupé to rise above a hatchback, but the RS3 is no ordinary hot hatch. A stonking five-cylinder engine and an aggressive four-wheel drive chassis, complete with a trick torque-vectoring rear diff, makes it Audi’s most exciting hot hatch ever, one with real desirability and bandwidth. So it should be, given it costs £61,975 – a whole £12k more than the BMW.

The M240 is based on BMW’s CLAR architecture and uses the familiar B58 six-cylinder engine – the difference for this latest version being the addition of a 48-volt mild-hybrid system. This aids efficiency but also boosts power and torque, and improves engine response. Useful given this is a small coupé that weighs 1755kg, 190kg more than the Audi…

Which is best? Our man Ethan Jupp drove them back to back to find out. ‘Straight comparison with the RS3 along the same piece of road reveals more about the M240’s strengths and shortcomings. You’re reminded that its platform has more inherent dynamic potential than the RS3’s family hatch genus, but driving with RS3 levels of commitment reveals what the M240 is missing in terms of top-tier performance hardware.’