Audi RS5 review

Audi Sport boss Rolf Mickl says that the aim was to deliver a car with real bandwidth. It’s a complicated machine, the RS5, but he insists that it should be easy for the driver to get on top of. More than ever, this is a car for all seasons, then, a hooligan that keeps a pair of slippers in the cupboard.

But it definitely still takes some getting used to. The ingredients are certainly spicy, and long gone are the days when you could plonk a big capacity engine into an existing chassis and sprinkle a bit of elastokinematic fairy dust over it. Harmonising all the disparate elements is a major challenge.

Have they succeeded?

The RS5 instantly feels gym-honed and hard as nails.

We’re straight in at the deep end, driving saloon and Avant versions in a final sign-off drive with the Audi Sport guys in Morocco. Our first taste of the car is at the semi-permanent street circuit Moulay El Hassan near Marrakech, a venue used most notably by Formula E. It’s tight and unforgiving, and not the sort of place you’d bring a lardbucket of a car that had issues with body control or understeer.

RS vehicle dynamics wizard Roland Waschkau slaloms the RS5 through cones before donutting it back round in a cloud of tortured hydrocarbons. This is not your average Audi.

How does it work in the hands of an average driver?

Getting slidey still takes technique. The trick is to maintain momentum as the yaw increases, then give it the full send at the end. And it works: in RS ‘torque rear’ mode, it does a very accurate impression of a WRC car, maybe even the Audi S1 Hoonitron driven by the late Ken Block.

Michl insists that this part of the car’s armoury is purely for fun, and that it’s unlikely many owners will bonfire their rear tyres like this. But there’s a dashcam and on-board telemetry, so it’s fun you can share if you’re so-minded.
We also learn a new German word: driftwinkel. The RS5 apparently manages a drift angle north of 70 degrees, a figure you can pore over thanks to an onboard ‘drift analyser’.

A meaningful test, was it?

The track is a bit twiddly, to be honest, but this actually highlights the RS5’s playful character as you work through the chassis modes. What traces of understeer that do exist are easily extinguished with a bootful of throttle, and it’s amusingly adjustable and friendly on (and over) the limit.

It’s irritating that the message is one of excess mass successfully hidden, when really we should be avoiding the problem in the first place. But hide the kilos the RS5 most definitely does, and the extra electrons obviously give the car a mighty power and torque boost, as well as 50 miles-plus of zero emissions running.

What’s it like in normal conditions?

Away from the track, our route takes us swiftly away from the city and into the mountains. Morocco is a mixed bag when it comes to the quality of its road surfaces, but it’s the gnarly stuff that proves more illuminating – because it’s similar to the shambles that prevails in the UK.

The RS5’s multi-link, coil sprung suspension and twin-valve dampers do a fine job of cushioning occupants from sudden intrusions, and delivers separate control for rebound and compression. There’s sufficient amplitude that you can feel the car ‘breathe’, not a scenario fast Audis past were acquainted with.

Note that it makes do with conventional anti-roll bars and doesn’t have an active rear axle… it would have been difficult to package all that.

Normally we’d reserve judgement until we get to try it in North Wales or Yorkshire. But we suspect the RS5 will be just fine in broken Britain.

Tell us about the different drive modes.

How long have you got? The drive settings encompass Comfort, Balanced, Dynamic, Individual, RS Sport and RS ‘rear torque’ modes, but on this early drive we mostly alternate between the first two. You can also mix and match the modes, and save the settings (Goldilocks mode, as it’s not called).

The RS5 is clearly not short of grunt, but find a good section of road and it will attack it with a zeal and application that’s really something. The eight-speed ’box is a torque converter rather than a DSG, and it’s fast enough in most use cases, if a touch uncouth in the more aggressive set-ups.

Does it feel as interactive as Audi claims?

In a straight line, in any of the modes bar the pure EV one, the rear axle torque vectoring means that the RS5 hooks up in a heartbeat and rockets off the line. In corner entry, it maximises stability and sharpens turn-in. On corner exit, the torque shifts to the outer wheel and helps rotate the car. There’s a driving dynamics controller in play here, which measures steering angle, throttle position, as well as monitoring G forces, yaw and slip angle, and helps target the differential torque as required – in five milliseconds.

Aside from all that, the RS5 starts in EV mode for silent, neighbour or London Mayor-friendly progress. You can alter the sound in this set-up for a little more character, and when the ICE is on song it sounds pretty sweet. If not quite as sonorous as those lovely old Audi five-pot engines (which happen to be celebrating their 50th birthday this year).

Anything else that stands out?

Its steering is more alive than ever. At 13:1, its ratio is faster and more direct than lesser A5 models. It’s a bit light for our tastes, but what it lacks in feel it makes up for in linearity. In terms of input, it’s ‘one and done’, so you can guide the car with impressive accuracy and fidelity.  

A shout out to the Pirelli rubber, too, a bespoke compound and measuring 285/35 all-round. Interestingly, the rear tyres are fractionally wider than the fronts, and that larger contact patch means they can manage higher lateral loads. There is no shortage of grip or traction in the RS5, and it steadfastly refuses to run out of answers even at full tilt or when asked to change direction suddenly.

It’s also one of the best Audis we’ve ever experienced in terms of braking. At 440mm, the RS5’s front discs are at the limit of what can actually be accommodated. Indeed, those dimensions equate to 17 inches, the diameter of the entire wheel on some early Nineties Ferraris.

The system is brake-by-wire, and relies on regenerative retardation in most situations – the paddleshifters on the wheel handle gearshifts but also the amount of regen. Only when you need to wipe off more speed do the friction stoppers actually come into play, and they do so with impressive force and feel. The ABS runs the latest software update and does its thing unobtrusively even if you absolutely stand on the brakes.

We should point out that steel discs are standard, and that the ceramics are an option. We’re waiting to confirm their cost.

Thumbs-up, then?

Keith Richards once famously said of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger that “he was a lovely bunch of guys”. The RS5 certainly packs a disparate group of personalities into one package, and risks an identity crisis as a result. But they all seem to co-exist harmoniously, and we can’t imagine anything covering real world ground much faster than this – especially in greasy conditions. This time the potential for extra amusement is baked-in.