Australian Audi RS 4 details revealed

Audi Australia has announced preliminary details for the all-new RS 4 Avant we drove in Spain this week, ahead of its local release next April.

The most important detail is pricing, which Audi Oz says will be about $15,000 cheaper than the original RS 4 (last sold at about $170,000) in the “mid-$150,000” region.

A price tag of $155,000 would narrowly undercut the cheaper, better equipped new RS 5 Coupe ($156,600 plus on-road costs), which shares its mechanical layout with the RS 4 and was released in Australia just last week.

More importantly, it would also be about $5000 lower than the RS 4’s only direct rival in the Mercedes-AMG C 63 S Estate ($159,711 plus ORCs).

There’s also the 3 Series wagon-based Alpina B3 S BiTurbo Touring ($149,900 plus ORCs), while BMW’s M3 sedan starts at just $129,900.

Like the RS 5 Coupe, for which Audi Australia claims an extra $24,000 worth of standard equipment, our RS 4 will come with a generous list of standard inclusions.

This will include an RS sports exhaust, Dynamic Ride Control (DRC) and rear sports differential.

Like the RS 5, the mid-size German performance wagon is powered by a Porsche-derived 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 that produces 331kW of power and 600Nm of torque via an eight-speed Tiptronic automatic and Audi’s quattro all-wheel drive system.

Audi claims the RS 4 can sprint to 100km/h in 4.1 seconds -- 0.6sec faster than its predecessor powered by a 331kW/430Nm 4.2-litre naturally-aspirated V8 – while fuel consumption also reduces, to 8.8L/100km.

That means the RS 4 is as quick as the rear-wheel drive C 63 wagon powered by a 375kW/700Nm 4.0-litre bi-turbo V8, and 0.2sec quicker than the 324kW/660Nm Alpina B3.

The RS 4’s top speed is limited to 250km/h but an optional RS dynamics package increases that to 280km/h.