Audi RS5 2010 Review

Audi RS5

Not so much
>> V8 could pull harder in its top 2000rpm
>> Ummm. Let me think
>> Still thinking...

Overall rating: 4.0/5.0
Engine/Drivetrain/Chassis: 4.5/5.0
Price, Packaging and Practicality: 4.5/5.0
Safety: 3.5/5.0
Behind the wheel: 4.5/5.0
X-factor: 4.5/5.0

About our ratings

It's a rare car, this... So rare that at Ascari (the private racetrack resort in southern Spain that was designed from scratch to replicate the trickiest bends from famous tracks all over the world), it just has too many temptations for fun to even bother about driving fast.

That, you might think, is pretty easy to do when you've got 331kW of power, but fast, production-based Audis have not been about fun before.

They've often been about brutal straight-line speed. They've always had unimpeachable interior quality and brilliant fit and finish. They've also had faithfulness about their handling that, courtesy of their engines hanging out in ahead of the front axle line, stopped well short of being fun.

But the RS5 has found a way around all that and it has turned one of the most handsome of sports coupes (A5 and S5) into one of the fastest and one of the most entertaining.

One of the key reasons for this is a new centre differential that is (bear with me here) both lighter and capable of faster power-shuffling gymnastics than any Audi before it.

The RS5 normally drives with 60 per cent of the torque going to the rear wheels, but it can instantly lift that figure to 85 per cent; or just as quickly shift 75 per cent of the drive to the front end. Audis have long been all-wheel drive, but they've never worked as cleverly or as quickly to keep things safe and interesting. Nor, for that matter, as intuitively.

It's this system, as much as anything else, that helps the RS5 to be the most enjoyable Audi yet -- except, maybe, for the R8 V10. Especially so when it's also coupled with the company's optional sports differential. It's this technology that helps the RS5 to power out of racetrack corners in lovely all-wheel drifts or lurid, oversteering slides, yet tames all that on public roads to leave you with security and a seemingly forgotten level of progression at the limits of grip.

The rest of the chassis also carries a sharper edge than the marque's previous benchmark, the S5. The body rides 20mm lower and wheels have grown to 19-inchers (though our test car had the optional 275/30 ZR20 tyres wrapped around the larger 20-inch alloys) which has allowed Audi to stuff them full of enormous brake discs and eight-piston calipers -- thus it stops NOW and the pedal never, ever sags or softens.

Then there's the latest version of Audi Drive Select -- a four-option system that governs the ride stiffness, the throttle openings, the gear shifting and what time the skid control's alarm clock wakes up. And, in this guise, it works very, very well, because if you can't find what you want in the Comfort, Automatic or Sports settings, you can individualise it to suit the roads you normally drive over.

On the bumpy, lumpy Spanish roads we used, it helped to switch everything into Dynamic, but leave the damping on Comfort, which left us more grip in the wet and kept the tyres more comfortably attached to the road surface.

The interior is a thing of deeply masculine beauty, with exposed double stitching everywhere and thickly bolstered seats than can be switched for a sports seat with even more bolstering and more adjustability.

But the most beautiful part of the RS5 isn't looking at it. It's listening to it. From inside, from outside; it doesn't matter but inside you also get to feel the 4.2-litre V8 shoving you in the back on its way to a 4.6-second, 0-100km/h sprint.

It's a free-spinning engine, willing to push itself to 8250rpm, but that doesn't mean the midrange has been ignored. In fact, it's so strong and so enticingly erotic to listen to that you'll probably find yourself short-shifting before the redline to hear its crackling, burbling, deep-chested snarl over and over again.

There is 430Nm of torque at 4000rpm, but it holds that midrange strength until around 6000, when the power should take over. Alas it doesn't quite do the job, instead feeling to tail off slightly at its top 2000 revs instead of continuing to hurl forward.

It's probably just a feeling, because the delivery up to that point is so strong (and it's not especially disappointing), but it's definitely more fun to live in the RS5's midrange than it is up high. So you stay there, fiddling all the time with the throttle to keep hearing the little overrun crackles and opening the throttle again for the deep induction rumble. All this and it pulls 10.8 litres/100km on the combined fuel consumption cycle -- though not the way we drove it.

The seven-speed double clutch gearbox flits through the cogs brilliantly and though 1725kg is not light, the V8 throws the RS5 to its 250km/h speed limit with disdain. If that's not enough, Audi can lift it to 280km/h for you...

The end result is a terrific car. The RS5 is Audi on top of its game.

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