Features

As an alternative to the smugness of Mercedes and the self-satisfaction of BMW, Audi always did very well. It was a minority player and very much the alternative smart German car.

But now its sales are accelerating as if on overboost and it's no longer any kind of alternative. As it gains full membership to the elite German club, Audi has started to cavort about with just the same smug self-satisfaction as its rivals, which is ironic for those of us who liked Audi in an 'I knew him before he was famous' kind of way.

There's a giant glass-palace Audi dealership going up that'll loom over the main Western approach to London like the transparently superior egos involved. The tone of Audi's advertising campaigns grows ever more snooty. And through their design, the cars themselves, which once presented an elegantly pared-back face to the world, look to have developed the same amore-propre.

I'm not slagging off the substance of the cars here. They've been getting better and better. I'd choose an R8 over a 911 or a Vantage in a heartbeat. The RS4 is pretty much peerless and the new TT's a peach. If someone told me I'd be using an A6 V6 diesel quattro Avant every day for the rest of my life I'd be properly chuffed.

But look at them. Audi calls it 'emotional design'. Maybe you do too, but to me it's all a bit flash and it has given them an unbecomingly vulgar swagger.

Now here's the new A5 and its S5 version. The design hogs your retina. The curves are fulsome, the jewellery bling, the grille immodest. And it looks big. The shell is wider than an A4's and longer in the wheelbase, and then it's visually magnified by its full-hipped and low-roofed proportions.

See it on 17-inch wheels and it looks like a plump sofa on tiny castors. Our photo S5 is on 19s. But though it might look like an A6 coupe, it's a member of the A4 family, which puts it as a rival for the bigger-engined versions of the 3-Series coupe and CLK. The size is just symptomatic of the way Audi leads with the chin these days

It's a very new car, because we're talking about the next-gen A4, due at the turn of the year, rather than the current one. Body, suspension, transmission, steering, they're all a fresh generation. Only the 4.2 FSI V8 is an old friend, from the S4, but even so it's had a little extra souping-up so it hits a walloping 354bhp.