Audi RS 5 gets into extreme sports
All-new performance coupe puts us right on track for next year’s family friendly RS 4 Avant, writes David Linklater.
It’s a measure of Audi’s understated ethos that a ‘‘new design direction’’ for the RS 5 constitutes some small blisters over the wheelarches and a tiny hole next to each tail-light.
But they are very nice details and as design signatures they have provenance. Straight-cut wheelarch flares are very much an RS thing and those rear vents pay homage to the rather awesome Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO racing car of the 1980s.
You know, if you look closely. Really closely. Which you probably will, because you’ll be trying to work out whether this is the new RS 5 or the old one.
The new RS 5 is in fact all-new and is in fact very significant for Audi New Zealand.
It’s all-new because it’s the first proper Audi Sport/RS model to be built on the latest A4 platform. It’s very significant for the same reason: it’s the advance guard for next year’s more Kiwi-friendly new-generation RS 4 Avant.
Audi NZ leads the world in RS share (12 per cent of its total sales so far this year) and the RS 4 is pretty much guaranteed to be its biggest-volume Audi Sport model. Batten down the family dog.
Much expectation surrounds the RS 5, then.
And the first thing you might notice is that it’s short a couple of cylinders.
Yes, the thunderous V8 is no more, replaced by a new 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 that makes exactly the same 331kW power but adds a whopping 150Nm more torque: the total is now 600Nm, also served up much lower down in the rev range at just 1900rpm.
It’s also 17 per cent more fuel efficient, with Combined fuel consumption of 8.7 litres.
If the numbers don’t convince you, maybe the Porsche connection will. This is a slightly more powerful version of the engine you’ll find in the Porsche Panamera 4S. As you might remember, Porsche had quite a hand in developing the first-ever Audi Sport car, the RS 2 estate.
Any way you look at it, this is a serious piece of high-performance equipment. It’s 60kg lighter than the previous V8 model and will rocket to 100kmh in 3.9 seconds. It has 20-inch wheels and quattro four-wheel drive, with a new generation of Dynamic Ride Control (DRC), with a hydraulic diagonal link between dampers to reduce pitch and roll.
And while the RS 5 is incredibly subtle-looking, you can dress it up with options like carbon fibre exterior elements (including the roof), a black-pack (as fitted to the car in these pictures), milled aluminium wheels (also saving 7kg) and Audi Exclusive paint.
But why bother? Bystanders might not see which way it went. The RS 5 is effortlessly rapid and boasts incredible traction.
The bigger question is whether it’s any fun, because RS cars of this size have not always been nimble. Fast, but not nimble.
Despite what you see in the pictures, our drive-time in the RS 5 was limited to the circuit, as we gatecrashed an Audi Drive Experience event at Hampton Downs in the Waikato.
Well, when we say ‘‘limited’’, rocketing around a racetrack in a super-coupe is not to be sniffed at.
The V6 twin-turbo engine is incredibly muscular at any speed. There’s no denying it lacks the character of a thunderous V8, but at least Audi Sport hasn’t attempted to fake-it-up to sound like one.
There’s electronic exhaustnoise trickery at work for sure, but it’s been tweaked to sound like an urgent V6. Which is what it is.
The new engine is matched to a conventional eight-speed automatic, rather than the usual dual-clutch S-tronic. Audi says this is because the automated-clutch unit can’t handle all that torque, which might be true - although the Panamera 4S has a PDK that handles 550Nm from this engine. But PDK is different to S-tronic and it’s not currently shared outside Porsche, models.
And it might be a moot point anyway. The eight-speed auto is smooth, quick and obviously doesn’t stand in the way of classleading acceleration. Sold.
Chassis-wise the RS 5 owner need not fear a track day. The steering is still not a chatty delight, but it does have substance. The RS 5 still tends towards understeer in sweeping corners, but only at speeds that would be unacceptable on a public road.
But as ever with an Audi RS, it’s best to apply that muscular engine to surreal quattro-traction to catapult the car out of corners. Do that and it’s deeply impressive.
You can take the dynamic package further.
There’s a sports rear differential ($3000) that’ll get power to the ground even more effectively and even ceramic brakes – for the serious track-day people, presumably, at a whopping $15,000.
Not entirely sure whether you need that stuff. The RS 5 boasts outrageous performance and much more engaging handling than any previous model, but it’s also quite grown-up. It has as much GT-car character as outright-racer in terms of design and demeanour, especially with the typically gorgeous Audi interior and the comprehensive list of driverassistance technology.
Just don’t expect it to dance and sing like a Mercedes-AMG C 63 or BMW M4 - although it’s actually faster than both.
What’s not in doubt is the RS 5’s ability and value for money. At $152,900 it’s a whole lot of car for the money and $15k less expensive than the model it replaces.