Hot on the wheels of Audi’s announcement of the fast, quintuple-banger RS3 sedan, Audi has just revealed the RS3 LMS racecar based on the new RS3 sedan. It looks like the RS3's evil supervillian version, and, at around $110-$130,000, it’s one of the cheapest ways to get into a genuine racecar.


The Audi R3 LMS is targeted at the TCR (Touring Car Racing) international category of motorsport, and conforms to that series regulations.




In accordance with TCR regs, the RS3 LMS has a 2-liter four-cylinder inline engine making 330 HP, 70 (and one cylinder) less than the road-going version, though it’s a safe bet that those 330 horses will get a lot more exercise than their daily-commuting 400 brothers.



The racecar version of the RS3 also has just a single racing bucket, a full roll cage, and everything extraneous stripped out of the interior. It’s actually a bit slower than the street-legal version, getting to 62 MPH in 4.5 seconds and topping out at 149 MPH, but the grip and handling are dramatically better. Like, racecar-better.


The bodywork is very modified, with dramatically flared fenders, a big-ass wing, heat-extracting hood, side sills, and that red-and-black paint job that would serve well to make this a Spiderman-mobile, if Spiderman had any money, which he doesn’t.




The RS3 LMS is expected to do well in the relatively low-barrier-to-entry TCR series, so this could become a first, entry-level racecar for many teams.

