Audi’s RS3, one of the most powerful sport compact cars on the market, just got even better. The luxury automaker refreshed the model for 2025, giving it new features and some performance enhancements. Most surprisingly, Audi focused on a sensory experience with certain elements of the car, including improving how the car smells.
For your sense of sight, the design is more aggressive. The 2025 RS3 has a meaner looking grille flanked by larger air intakes and updated LED headlights with Audi’s signature Dynamic DRLs. The lights play welcoming and exit sequences when approaching out exiting the car for those who care about the little things, and have customizable designs. There are also new wheels, which get wrapped with updated tires that Audi says have more grip.
Out back the 2025 RS3 has new, narrower taillights and a revised diffuser that gets split with a vertical reflector. The massive oval exhausts you can stick a fist in thankfully remain. The RS3 also continues its trend of offering cool paints, with the color palette expanding to include Ascari Blue, Progressive Red and a matte Daytona Gray.
For your sense of hearing, Audi’s excellent turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-5 remains, making 401 horsepower. If you’ve never heard this engine, its unique odd cylinder setup helps give it one of the best exhaust soundtracks around. Audi messed around with the software and algorithms for performance features like the adaptive damping suspension and rear differential, making the RS3 more stable during performance driving and giving the driver more control. Audi engineers have also essentially made drifting the RS3 easier than ever, which is a good thing — as long as you know what you’re doing.
The biggest sensory experience is inside. We all love new car smell, even though it may be dangerous, and Audi has taken the time to get the chemical composition of the updated RS3’s interior smell just right. By using premium materials like real leather, Audi says the interior components are chemically analyzed, and they’re then placed in a heated chamber and the air they give off is also analyzed.
The result is an interior that has literally been fine-tuned to smell alluring in a number of temps and environments. Also new on the 2025 RS3 are a flat-bottomed steering wheel with red RS mode buttons, a redesigned shifter in place of the weird toggle switch, a new tachometer display for the digital gauge cluster, and Audi app store access for the center infotainment screen.
The biggest interior news are the new optional bucket seats. Following a trend set by other high-performance models, these seats have leather and microsuede covering on the fronts and exposed carbon fiber on the backs. They look fantastic
Keep in mind that what you see here is the European version of the RS3; Audi has yet to release pricing and info for the U.S. version of the performance sedan. We still won’t get the Sportback version of the RS3, which is a damn shame because it looks great. When the 2025 RS3 does go on sale, we can probably expect it to cost slightly more than the current car’s $62,300 starting price.
