A winning formula, with power in design and character
feeling of effortlessness and cheer. It’s also a lot lighter over the front axle, which lets it combine with a more comfortoriented suspension setting to deliver better ride, a more coherent all-round poise and sweeter handling.
That’s not to suggest that it’s quicker. It’s not. Anywhere. The difference is that you have to drive the A5 2.0l TFSI around corners on its 245/40 R18 rubber, while you can just hurl the S5 into places at unreasonable speed and just expect the 255/35 R19 boots to stick.
But it’s pretty nice to be driving the car through corners, with the handling feeling wellbalanced and fun, the ride quality not being damaged by road nastiness and the whole thing delivering a calm, easy feeling when you’re not pushing it.
It’s also more than flexible enough, with its torque peak arriving at only 1,600r/min, so you can drive it easily and quickly at city commuting speeds, and it spins so freely beyond 6,000r/min that you seriously wonder why the rev limiter isn’t set at 10,000. It’s a genuine sweetheart of a thing, with the engine note angry when the throttle opening is wide and then relaxed when the driver is.
A few shekels upstream, the S5 feels a more coherent beast than the S4 sedan manages with the same powertrain and essentially the same suspension hardware.
There is a feeling from the S5 that it’s happier to be pointed, squirted and then pointed again than the S4, and it also feels more cheerful when it’s attacking and calmer when it’s not.
The steering delivers little feel or feedback in its Comfort setting, but it’s also at its most predictable there, while it demonstrates traces of interest in the road surface in the Dynamic mode, however delivers different amounts of wheel- turning rates as you wind on more lock. Some people like that, some don’t.
Our S5 had the optional sports differential plonked on the rear axle, which is a gem of a thing that makes power-on understeer almost impossible to find and renders the S5 capable of cornering muscle that is frankly beyond the skill sets of most owners to appreciate. Except in emergencies.
It’s nevertheless capable of also being flowed quite smoothly from apex to apex and while its ride is acceptably tidy on rougher roads, it’s not a patch on its smooth-riding A5 sibling.
The S5 is so strong down low, from idle, that it makes the old supercharger feel like a philosophical throwback. The issues with the noise in the S4 are still there, partly because it feels like Audi has gone to great lengths to try to make the V6 sound a bit like its in-line five-cylinder quattro rally cars from the 1980s.
The torque hits outrageously early and its all-wheel drive system is nearly foolproof, which lets you smash the accelerator pedal as hard as you like in any conditions and expect to come out of it not just alive, but with your pace enhanced.
Its throttle response is better than before, too, and the only issue is that the engine and exhaust sounds are both contrived and far too high. Its tone in Dynamic mode is only for the committed, really, with an assortment of tone and depth and metallic resonance changes until it turns into just-plain noise from around 5,000r/min until the 6,500r/min rev limiter.
Its eight-speed automatic transmission shifts cleanly and quickly, though it’s not a patch on the precision action of the dual-clutch system in the stock A5 2.0l TFSI.
Inside the A5, Audi has given the coupes their best technical and material efforts, with a 8.3inch satellite navigation screen in the middle of the dash, the ability to connect smartphones that haven’t even been invented yet, the terrific 12.3-inch Virtual Cockpit screen that replaces the traditional instrument cluster considerably behind the steering wheel and flat-bottomed steering wheels trimmed in leather and paddleshifters. If you want to know all the really silly details, the status, location or even whether the car is locked or not can be accessed from your sofa, via an app on the fourth generation of the Apple TV.
It’s a bigger car, too, with 47mm more length (4,673mm) than the old car and it rides on a wheelbase that, at 2,764mm, is 13mm longer than its predecessor. Audi’s added another 10l to the boot capacity (now up to 465l), and there’s a 40:20:40 split-fold rear seat to access even more space.
So, while it might not have the clean, simple design purity of the original, the formula for both the A5 and the S5 is pretty much unsullied (the S5’s automatic transmission notwithstanding).
And if you liked the ownership experience of the original, you’re solidly likely to like this one, too.