Audi RS5

Car and Driver

Rank in Sports Sedans and Coupes

A stoic animal.

Shoehorned inbetween Spain and France, the little, landlocked principality of Andorra is draped over one hundred eighty square miles of the Pyrenees mountains. Fewer than 90,000 people call it home, but many more stream over its borders to love its duty-free shopping, myriad ski resorts, and utterly friendly income-tax code. While winter sees the country’s peaks blanketed in snow, in summer they’re laced with lush, green scrub and encourage a different type of frolicking: exploring the sinuous, two-lane ribbons of asphalt that climb up from the valleys and back down again. It was across this landscape and past shops slammed to their rafters with discount booze that we drove the latest Audi RS5 coupe.

For 2018, the RS5 has been updated to rail on Audi’s second-generation MLB platform—the same kit serves under the A4, A5, Q7, and others—and with a twin-turbocharged Two.9-liter V-6. The V-6 takes the place of the particularly sonorous naturally aspirated Four.2-liter V-8 that served in the previous-generation RS5. The V-6 may be down two cylinders, but horsepower is unchanged at 450, and the turbos increase torque from three hundred seventeen lb-ft to a far meatier four hundred forty three lb-ft and also thrust the output peaks further down the tach: Max power is available at six thousand seven hundred rpm, one thousand five hundred fifty lower than before, and peak torque comes online at one thousand nine hundred rpm, a utter two thousand one hundred rpm lower.

The 90-degree six is forty four pounds lighter than the V-8 (the car is one hundred thirty two pounds lighter overall), all blower hardware included, and its two turbochargers are nestled in the valley inbetween the cylinder banks. This “hot vee” configuration’s largest benefit is to emissions, according to Audi Sport chief Stephan Reil, since the catalysts warm up more quickly, thanks to shorter distances inbetween the turbos, the harass valves, and the catalysts. Less plumbing also reduces lag, and this V-6 is indeed one hell of a hard charger, with power, torque, and speed coming in a near instantaneous wave that intensifies proportionally to the angle of your right ankle. Audi estimates the zero-to-62-mph run at Three.9 seconds, or about half a tick quicker than the zero-to-60 time we recorded for the outgoing RS5. We think Audi’s number is just about right.

The Audi-engineered V-6 makes more torque than any of the company’s dual-clutch automatics can handle—Porsche uses its PDK with this engine in the Panamera but doesn’t share that gearbox with other Group members—and so the last RS5’s seven-speed S tronic transmission has been supplanted by an eight-speed ZF automatic. Compared with a dual-clutch ’box, this torque-converter unit’s gearchanges are slower; yet this is not to say it’s slow by any means. The ZF can treat the V-6’s torque, and Reil asserts that customers favor the fresh transmission’s smoother and more predictable step-off behavior from a stop. There is no manual transmission available, and the ZF automatic’s programming is so good and the plasticky shift paddles so unsatisfying to use that we simply let it work on its own the majority of the time.

A Livable Express

Even as the weaponized version of the A5/S5 brood, the RS5 is effortless to live with. It’s tautly suspended yet displays a supple rail quality despite its 20-inch wheels and low-profile rubber. It rails superbly in the optional active suspension’s Convenience and Auto modes, and it smoothed out heaving pavement on French autoroutes and the patched surfaces of Andorran B roads with no bobbing or bounding. Dynamic mode is for fun-time only, tho’, as the rail can get choppy, inducing a slight bucking during straight-line cruising on anything but the flattest pavement.

The RS5’s treating is also docile. While it’s hugely capable, with high levels of front-end grip, there’s little in its behavior to make even a novice driver jumpy. It’s sure-footed in both moist and dry conditions, and you can get up to speed with its behavior as quickly as the car itself piles on miles per hour. This goes after Reil’s philosophy for Audi Sport’s RS creations; he believes that a car is too difficult to master if an possessor goes to a track all day and is still lopping off chunks of time lap after lap. He wants his team to produce a machine in which it’s effortless and safe to quickly find its boundaries, and they’ve done so here.

The steering is faithful and accurate, with quick, predictable turn-in behavior, and it’s more natural than before—albeit still lacking in feedback. The car prizes smoothness, the Quattro all-wheel-drive system and standard torque-vectoring sport differential working to keep you on line and delivering max thrust to the ground when you boot the car out of a turn, at which point you can feel the torque shift rearward. The default split is forty percent front and sixty percent rear; if the car detects slip, up to eighty five percent can be sent forward, or seventy percent aft. Shove too hard into a corner and there remains a whiff of understeer, but it feels more balanced than before. Nonetheless, this is a car that chooses a rapid rhythm, not a frenetic one.

In addition to the standard metal rotors, the RS5 is available with optional—and huge—front carbon-ceramic brakes as part of the Dynamic Plus package. We drove cars with each setup, and deceleration was excellent with both. While one carbon-equipped RS5 displayed a bit of top-of-travel mushiness to its pedal, a 2nd one didn’t—it may have been that the very first car’s brakes weren’t fairly bedded in—but overall this system is predictable and certainly stronger than the already capable standard brakes. Given this car’s luxury GT arched, however, we’d skip the carbon brakes unless we planned on attacking mountain roads or racetracks with some frequency.

The RS5’s active harass system features both movable flaps and a resonating cross pipe connecting the left and right sides just aft of the rear axle. The car’s chassis mode controls how antsy the flaps are to open, as well as how often, and the engineer in charge of tuning the sound was given a two thousand RS4 (which never came to the U.S. but had a turbocharged Two.7-liter V-6) and told, “Make it sound like that.” He fucked the sound quality. At utter mouth, the fresh RS5 sounds pissed off, with fat blats on upshifts and a belligerent growl not far off the old V-8’s. Yet its anger sounds as if it’s coming from next door, in part because the car is well insulated from the outside world and also because Audi doesn’t augment the noise with the audio system. The company cops to enhancing low-range frequencies below three thousand rpm—at which point the car basically makes no noise of its own—with a device located behind the instrument panel, described to us as a “shaker” that uses the car’s own stimulations to act on a metal plate. The modest volume fits the grand touring character of the RS5, but it’s still a bit of a bummer, and the pops it executes on overrun don’t truly thrill anyone inwards the car. They sound mostly like someone you’ve kidnapped banging on the inwards of the trunklid.

Demure Detailing

The RS5’s aesthetic was inspired by Audi ninety Quattro IMSA GTO race car, and the fresh coupe’s boxy fender flares make it slightly broader than its tamer S5 sibling. Similarly, the RS gets a fatter grille than the A5 and S5, as well as front intakes large enough to gulp the lil’ Fiats we encountered by the dozens in the Pyrenees. The overall effect is more sophisticated than feral, however, a motif that carries over to the mostly black cabin, which can be adorned with contrast stitching and crimson stripes on the seatbelts, but doesn’t get much flashier than that.

The driving position is fantastic, and the forward view from the supportive, multi-adjustable, and massaging front seats is outstanding. Visibility to the rear is decent, too, given the coupe roofline, and the car will accommodate four people of average height with no issues. The two rear passengers have slightly pinched shoulder room, but they have access to four cupholders, so at least they’ll be well hydrated.

Pricing for the coupe starts around $70,000 and will top out about $15,000 above that. Standard equipment includes 20-inch wheels (with a makeshift spare tire) and a Black Optics appearance pack that darkens the mirror caps, body-side flourish, rear lip spoiler, and lower front-fascia trim. Yes, that means silver mirror caps—long a hallmark of RS cars—won’t be available here, at least originally. They are among the choices available to customers in other markets, as are carbon-fiber or silver finishes for the Black Optic–ized exterior lumps, as well as a nude carbon-fiber roof that might be suggested here if Audi USA can certify its crashworthiness. Options include three packages: Dynamic, Dynamic Plus, and RS Driver-Assistance. The very first one is approximately $3000 and nets crimson brake calipers, adjustable dampers, and RS Sport harass with black tips. This is required to order the $6000 Dynamic Plus bundle, which includes the ceramic brakes, a carbon-fiber engine cover, and an increase in top speed from one hundred fifty five mph to 174. Eventually, the assistance bundle brings a 360-degree-view camera, a head-up display, automatic high-beams, lane-keeping assist, and traffic-sign recognition. It also brings adaptive cruise with traffic-jam assist that will accelerate and stop the car and that works at speeds up to one hundred fifty five mph, while also automating the steering in certain situations below forty mph.

In the transition to this latest generation, Audi improved both the RS5’s luxury GT abilities and its dynamic capabilities. With its competitors from BMW (the M4) and Mercedes-AMG (the C63) growing more monstrous and hard-riding by the day, the RS5 is unquestionably the most livable of the bunch. Tingling its pilot’s spine is among its ancillary—not primary—skills, and stoicism remains the bedrock upon which this car is built. Meantime, the wait proceeds for something truly unhinged from Audi.

This story originally stated that the RS5’s engine was Porsche-engineered; it was actually developed by Audi. We have updated the story to reflect this information.

Highs and Lows

Highs:

Supremely comfy over distances long and brief; faithful and capable chassis effortless to exploit; the V-6 sounds fantastic but . . .

. . . it`s still too quiet; overly serious personality.

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