Features

Zero to 62mph passes in 4.8 seconds, 0-124mph comes just 11.8 seconds later, and a visit to the magistrates follows soon after. If you're bold enough, now flick a thumb against the button marked 'S' on the left-hand spoke of the Lamborghini Gallardo-spec steering wheel.

You'd better be tensed in preparation. Small motors in the already all-restraining Touring Car-style seats now clamp hard against the driver's kidneys - mainly to wedge you even more firmly in place, but also, perhaps, to act as a mildly sadistic warning never to allow your concentration levels to dip below 'wide-eyed'.

'S' also switches the throttle map to a mode so sharp in its responses that the slightest ankle twitch sends you charging precariously forwards, while the deeply ominous sound effects are boosted to a level that sends deer scattering from distant fields and knocks the final few autumn leaves from the trees, even at a tickover.

This isn't hyperbole - this car is ridiculously loud.

There's power, indisputably, but control too. For a car that reads like a hardcore head-banger, the RS4's clutch is surprisingly light, and the manual 'box slides readily enough between each of its six ratios.

The steering doesn't take the muscles of a well-oiled Mr Universe to get to grips with, either, responding quickly to slight wrist movements and building in detail as the tyres key harder into the road surface.

There's less of the unnerving variation in assistance at speed that can be experienced in A4s from lower down the food chain too.

There's a degree of suppleness to the RS4's damping that works well here. Body control is severely tied down and yet the ride is rarely so rigid as to force the driver to back off the throttle and give in to the sudden camber changes and patchy repairs that are so characteristic of British backroads. A BMW M3, for instance, would get bounced around that bit more here.

This is a chunk of high-grade, high-performance machinery, built with the purpose of shrinking stretches of road to half their apparent length; in the sleet and drizzle of winter as much as the baked dry heat of mid-summer.

There's four-wheel drive, with a 40-per-cent front to 60-per-cent rear torque split engineered in - more to subdue the understeer that could result from having such a bulky engine up front, than to induce the rear end of the car to squirrel wide of its line at every twist.

There's a little tram-lining and even a hint of torque steer (yes, in a four-wheel-drive car) to deal with too.

Then there are the brakes. Cross-drilled, inner ventilated and with vast eight-piston calipers on the front that look more suited to the task of taming a Bugatti Veyron. As it is, they're constantly called on to moderate the immense speed that so often builds up on the approach to corners.