From the archives: Audi RS4 vs Porsche Cayman S

Two streaks of scarlet split the calm, following the contours of a valley like cruise missiles on a satellite-guided journey towards the destruction of some unseen target. As they charge along in unison, a wall of sound comes barrelling on behind, a deep thrum joined by an altogether more vicious sonic boom.

Freeze-frame this moment and their identities can be unravelled. Here are two of the most anticipated cars of the year; one, a brutal hyper saloon, the other a precision focused coupe.

Words: Peter Grunert
Photography: Barry Hayden

This feature was first published in Issue 148 of Top Gear magazine (2005)

A pair of German cars that are setting soft compound rubber on UK tarmac for the very first time: the Audi RS4 and Porsche Cayman S.

Zoom right in and the Audi surges forwards first. Barking and rumbling like it’s just been dropped from air jacks and pushed out of a pit garage, the RS4 roughly forces itself through the frozen air. That deep-jawed, matt aluminium-fringed grille, together with the multiple cooling ducts and the pumped-up wheelarches, is a defiant warning of what this car’s all about.

Focus closer and we’re inside, pushing hard and holding on tight. The transformation to a £49,980 sub-supercar has brought with it an interior covering of aluminium, black leather and deeply lacquered carbon fibre. It’s dark, as in menacing, in here, which is a wholly appropriate sensation given this car’s technical potential.

Motivation comes from a carbon-fibre and bright-red-alloy finished 4.2-litre V8, using the same FSI direct injection hardware as Audi’s Le Mans-dominating R8 race cars to deliver a frankly staggering set of statistics. Try 414bhp at a peak of 7,800rpm and 317lb ft at 5,500rpm, with 90 per cent of that torque accessible all the way from 2,250rpm right through to 7,600rpm. Keep your right foot in and the brain-bruising propulsion won’t let up until the 8,250rpm redline nears. In road cars, you just don’t get V8s that rev so ferociously.

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 such a hardcore head-banger, the RS4’s clutch is surprisingly light, and the manual gearbox 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 tramlining 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. The pads even pulse subtly on and off to prevent a film of water from building up on the surface of the discs in drenched conditions.

The RS4 is a crushingly capable car, a new benchmark not just for Audi, but among all practical alternatives. But never, ever, take it for granted. Ditches, tree trunks, wet leaves, high walls and the awareness that the default point of intervention of the stability control system has been wound right back, all conspire to keep it honest here. As, too, does the presence of our other very red Teutonic marvel of engineering, now coursing hard up behind in the Audi’s brushed alloy mirrors...

At £43,940, the Porsche Cayman S is in the same ballpark as the RS4 on price, but otherwise approaches the task of assaulting your senses from an altogether different tangent. Try two seats, a hatchback and a 3.4-litre flat-six engine mounted for optimum poise, right at the middle.

If this is a power struggle then the Porsche is already down on its luck and waiting to unfurl the white flag. There’s 295bhp at 6,250rpm, accompanied by 251lb ft at 4,400rpm to play with. That’s up on the Boxster S that the Cayman S is largely based on, but just down on a regular 911; it’s also a long way behind the figure boasted by the Audi. 0-62mph is done with in 5.4 seconds, although the 171mph max speed tops the RS4’s artificially limited 155mph figure (said to actually be closer to 185mph with the Big Brother bits disconnected).

Where the RS4 represents a kind of surreal collision of ultra-violence and practicality, the Cayman S is built for the simple, undiluted pursuit of driving entertainment. There’s no visual vagueness to its purpose, with a squat, compact, airdam-scraping stance, large vents cut into the leading edges of its rear wings and a closely paired set of exhaust outlets staring rudely back at all cars that have just been overtaken. Tall (optional) 19-inch alloys fill the arches snugly, a £1,256 indulgence where 19s come as a standard fit on all UK bound RS4s.

There’s still greater focus inside, with a very low-set seating position, a broad transmission tunnel running close by the driver’s elbow and a covering of neatly stitched leather where some unseemly plastics are exposed on the dash of a Boxster.

The Cayman’s speed builds on you stealthily, especially after experiencing the full battering that the RS4 unleashes on its driver. At first the valvegear whines away under the detachable, carpeted engine cover fixed immediately behind your ears, as if to protest at being treated too nervously. Just push beyond 4,500rpm to shift from measured urgency to a more frantic pace, at which point the Variocam Plus variable-valve timing-and-lift system exclusive to the Cayman S and 911 cuts in. There’s vivid noise and more than enough speed now too. The six-speed ’box flicks even more neatly through its ratios than the RS4’s, although the clutch gives your right leg a tougher workout in the process.

Still the Cayman nibbles away at the gap, squarely locked on to the RS4’s tail on all but long, straight stretches. Just don’t bother pressing the Sport button set into its centre console to electronically stiffen the dampers – on these roads it leaves the front end bobbing around, unsettling the car’s flow.

Returning to the Cayman’s fresh-out-of-the-box set up, the messages feeding back to the driver are less outrageous and yet somehow more intimate than in the RS4. This car sits visibly closer to the road surface, with a lower centre of gravity also built in. Despite the use of aluminium to lighten the RS4’s front wings and bonnet, the Porsche still weighs in at 310kg less. That closes the power-to-weight gap too, with the Cayman S recording 220bhp per tonne next to the RS4’s figure of 251bhp per tonne.

A fiendish series of curves – apparently designed to keep local bodyshops provided with a constant supply of clients – tips the balance in the Cayman’s favour, with awkward sight lines matched to tightening radiuses and variable grip levels. None of them fazes it.

Some people call it finesse. The matching of tyres, spring and damper rates blends perfectly to face the challenge set by these roads, with turn-in speed, smoothness of responses, grip and feedback moving on another increment.

The Cayman claims greater balance, tighter poise. No detail of the car’s behaviour is held back from the driver, however uncomfortable it may be to take in. As a result, you very quickly learn to trust it implicitly.

The information content is so clear that the rear-drive Cayman’s potential is even more accessible than the quattro-equipped RS4’s. And its brakes are similarly astonishing in their effectiveness; strong under repeated hard stops, progressive in action and loaded with feel. This all brings a dilemma. In a fight to the death, which do you need on your side? Overwhelming firepower or superior accuracy?

Of course, you want both. So spare yourself the agony of indecision. In the RS4 and Cayman's case, you'd have scored a spectacular result if you ever found yourself in either.