Seven hundred and fifty cars. That’s how many RS3 Competition Limited editions Audi Sport will build to mark a half-century of five-cylinder engines — a motor the company fully expects to kill after this generation. The send-off is real, and so is the price tag: roughly $126,000 in Germany for the Sportback, nearly $50,000 more than a standard RS3 hatch in that market.
Audi of America has confirmed to Road & Track that the sedan will come Stateside, likely arriving in 2027. Canada gets it too, sedan only. The hatchback Sportback — the prettier body style, naturally — stays in Europe.
The 2.5-liter turbocharged inline-five still makes 394 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque, unchanged from the regular RS3. Zero to 62 mph takes 3.8 seconds and top speed is 180 mph. Audi is not selling extra power here. It’s selling a funeral with gold trim.
The real hardware upgrade lives underneath. For the first time on an RS3, Audi fits a fully adjustable coilover suspension with three-way damper tuning — low-speed compression in 12 clicks, high-speed compression in 15, rebound in 16. Stainless steel twin-tube shocks up front come with external reservoirs, while aluminum units sit at the rear.
A stiffer tubular rear stabilizer rated at 85 N/mm replaces the stock piece. Audi even includes the tools and a setup manual in the car. Ceramic brakes with red calipers are standard, and so is the torque-splitting rear differential that already makes the regular RS3 one of the most adjustable all-wheel-drive compacts ever built.
The cosmetic work leans hard into carbon fiber and nostalgia. Matte carbon canards, mirror caps, side skirts, rear spoiler, and diffuser trim sharpen the look. Nineteen-inch wheels wear a matte Neodymium gold finish.
The darkened matrix LED headlights animate in a 1-2-4-5-3 sequence — the five-cylinder’s firing order — every time you lock or unlock the car. Three colors are available: Daytona gray, Glacier white matte, and an exclusive Malachite green that recalls the Sport quattro rally cars of the 1980s.
Inside, Audi goes heavy on the gold-and-white theme. RS bucket seats get Neodymium gold Dinamica microfiber centers with Ginger white contrast stitching. The digital gauges adopt a white background, a deliberate nod to the 1994 RS2 Avant’s instrument cluster. Each car carries a numbered plaque on the center console.
Sound insulation around the firewall has been reduced so the five-cylinder’s offbeat bark reaches occupants more directly. The RS sport exhaust opens its valves earlier in the aggressive drive modes. Audi knows what it has and wants you to hear every last combustion event before regulations silence this engine for good.
The five-cylinder story traces back to 1976, when Audi needed something bigger than a four but shorter than a six for the second-generation 100. The oddball inline configuration became a turbocharged rally weapon by the early 1980s, disappeared in 1997, and returned in the 2009 TT RS. Today it stands as the only five-cylinder in its segment — a distinction no one else is racing to claim.
Edmunds estimates the U.S. price will land between $115,000 and $120,000 based on current exchange rates, against the standard 2026 RS3’s $67,395 MSRP. That’s a staggering premium for coilovers, carbon bits, and exclusivity on a car built on the Volkswagen Golf platform.
Audi is banking on collectors and completists who understand that this engine has no successor. The five-cylinder’s 1-2-4-5-3 heartbeat is about to flatline, and Audi wants to charge you handsomely for the privilege of hearing its last breath. European deliveries begin mid-2026, and North American allocation numbers remain undisclosed.
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