Living with the DS 3 Performance

Sometimes you don’t need all four wheels to enjoy a drive.

Excepting the spare, an increasingly rare item in modern cars anyway, the wheel count in most cars is five – four on the ground and one in the cabin.

This number is a movable feast in the DS 3 Performance, however. Its ride is firm overall, and borderline stiff at the back. That means you can safely get the inside rear wheel up in the air more or less at will during spirited cornering.

And that is at least one definition of fun in a hot hatch. Some of our older readers will no doubt remember getting up to similar high jinks in cars like Peugeot’s 205 Gti. It’s not just a highly grin-worthy handling attribute, it’s also quite a handy one because a floating inside rear wheel seems to make the back end of the car more wieldy.

But the main thing is the fun, which after all is what cars like the DS 3 Performance are supposed to be about. Some might find the suspension a bit too hard for comfort in urban situations, and you never forget that you’d probably be enjoying yourself more on a winding B-road, but we like the sense of focus that this stiffness brings to the Performance. The strict damper settings quickly reset the body into its default position after a heavy bump, so you’re immediately ready for the next one rather than in some kind of halfway-house recovery mode.

The other point in the DS 3’s favour is the amount of grip on tap. It has Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres, a choice it has in common with the Porsche 911. The DS 3 can be beaten in a straight line by some rivals, but in dry weather at least the Michelins lift the DS 3 to a class-leading level of A-to-B pace. Its mix of tenacious front wheel grip and back end ‘fluidity’ means you can cram hard into a corner with the brakes on knowing that a quick flick of the wrists will get you around with no bother at all.

Looking ahead, our plan is to explore the DS 3’s absolute limits on track and to give it the acid test of a joust with the best-in-class Fiesta ST. In the meantime though we’re more than happy to enjoy the car’s playfulness quotient with the driver enjoyment dial set at eight.

DS 3 THP 210 S&S PERFORMANCE BLACK

Price £22,995
Price as tested £23,345
Economy 34.0mpg  

Tony Middlehurst​ is a writer for AutoCar.