2023 Audi RS Q3 vs Porsche Macan

What's the difference?

Is 10 years long enough for a special birthday celebration? When you're a kid, hitting 'double figures' is a pretty big deal, and Audi's obviously in the mood to make some noise because it has lit the candles on a limited 10th anniversary version of its compact SUV rocket ship, the RS Q3.

Only 555 examples of the 'RS Q3 Sportback edition 10 years' will be produced for worldwide consumption, with Audi Australia capturing a batch of them and sending one our way for a brief blast as the fiery five-cylinder starts filtering into dealerships.

For Porsche, T is much more than the 20th letter of the alphabet. In Weissach-world it stands for Touring, and has been applied to special 911 variants for over half a century.

More recently it’s been attached to the 718 Boxster and Cayman, and now the mid-size Macan SUV.

Porsche says T means “precise tuning, exclusive equipment and efficient engines”, and this most recent example adds another option in the Macan line-up, one rung above the entry-level model.

We spent a week with this recently introduced 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, AWD machine to see how far it expands the Porsche Macan performance and practicality envelope.