Going large Litchfield BMW M2 Pack £6,361 upgrade Litchfield Audi RS3 Pack £2,058 upgrade

WE SAY: THE SECRET IS OUT. IF YOU FANCY GIVING YOUR AUDI RS3 OR BMW M2 A FACE-BENDING TICKLE, HEAD TO LITCHFIELD

Some cars roll of the production line with so much power you’d have to be in one hell of a hurry to need even more performance from them. The Audi RS3 is not a big car – it’s slightly smaller than a Ford Focus – yet it has 395bhp in factory tune. The BMW M2, meanwhile, doesn’t lag too far behind, equipped as it is with a 365bhp turbocharged straight-six. Neither Audi’s junior RS nor BMW’s pugnacious little coupe is crying out for more shove.

But that hasn’t stopped tuning specialist Litchfeld from turning up the wick on both cars. Given that Litchfeld’s tech bods spend most of their time building 1,000bhp Nissan GT-Rs, perhaps it’s no surprise they looked at the RS3 and M2 and reckoned both were desperately understufed.

An ECU remap, an uprated air flter and a bigger intercooler was all it took to lift the Audi’s turbocharged fve-pot to a mighty 500bhp. Torque, meanwhile, has leapt from 354lb ft to 484lb ft. Those are huge increases. Cost? £2,058. For an extra 105bhp and 130lb ft, that looks pretty good value.

Litchfeld ofers a full upgrade package for the M2, meanwhile, which swaps out the standard suspension for adjustable AST kit and also ramps up power and torque to 420bhp and 420lb ft, courtesy of a remap, a Milltek exhaust and a new intercooler. The whole lot costs £6,361, unless you want the really fancy titanium Akrapovic exhaust system rather than the Milltek, in which case you’ll pay £9,755.

With more power than the previous Porsche 911 Turbo, the Litchfeld RS3 is, unsurprisingly, colossally fast in a straight line. The engine is still very tractable, too, pulling well from 2,500rpm, lighting up at 3,000rpm and ripping all the way to the limiter at 7,000rpm with the unrelenting accelerative force of a supercar.

It’s the M2 that’s really been transformed, though. The ride is better and body control is massively improved, so you feel much more confdent at the wheel. The engine, meanwhile, is a peach, revving with the response and energy of a normally aspirated motor. The power gains might not be as signifcant, but we all know there’s more to driving fun than power alone – and BMW’s littlest M car was already one of our favourites.