Audi S5 Reviewaudi S5 Articleaudi Coupe Reviews5 Articlenew S5car Reviewsa5 Coupe
Audi’s new 350hp coupe, which slots in between the A4 and the A6, looks good in natural light, and in S5 guise it looks fantastic, even if the black colour of the vehicles on the car's launch made it look as if we were a group of Gangsta rappers charging across the countryside.
And charge we did, because this is a driver’s car, sticking to the road like glue and possessing enough grunt to accelerate from a standstill to 60mph in under 5.1 seconds. The V8 engine may be related to the one in the RS4, and it may have 49 fewer horses under the hood, but it’s the torque that matters here, and while the RS4 V8 has a peak torque of 317lb ft at a stratospheric 5500rpm, the bent eight in the S5 is good for a bigger 325lb ft way down at 3500rpm.
This actually makes the car much easier to drive. In an RS4 you’re always reaching for the gearlever, but in the S5 you can leave it in third on a particularly winding and undulating stretch of road and let the tsunami of torque propel you along at a surprisingly quick rate. Think of the S5 as the car for someone who wants to relax a little while demolishing the miles.
But back to the S5 – there’s one Achilles heel in the otherwise impressive driving experience. The damping is fine, absorbing big dips and bumps in the road, but the springing is on the stiff side, so you’re shaken by even small imperfections in the road.
Yes, this is a performance version of the A5 platform, and the other cars will no doubt be more softly sprung, but you get the feeling most of the suspension work was done on smooth roads somewhere in Germany.
That’s borne out on the track, where the S5 proved to be the perfect weapon for attacking an apex. Thanks to the torque laden nature of the engine you can forget about gear changing and think more about cornering. As with all new Audi’s the quattro system has a normal 40/60 front/rear torque split, which means that instead of power understeering out of a corner you get a nice balanced drift that feels entirely natural.
Jiggley suspension aside, the S5 is actually a very nice coupe to drive, especially with the 40/60 front rear torque split balancing the car as you blast out of another corner. But perhaps the best aspect of the car is that you don’t really need to worry what gear you’re in. The car will simply pile on the speed with an authentic V8 grumble. Turbos may be all well and good, but cubic inches still have a lot to offer.
