2009 Audi S5 Reviews

Two doors and a V8 seems to be flavour of the year.

We are adrift in a raging sea of numbers. We're at the briefing for the newest of the countless models Audi has unleashed since 2004, and its very name is half numerical.The S5 is a fresh departure for Audi, built on an all-new platform.And, as with most Audis, the sum of the S5 is somewhat less than its parts.The S5 is the S-for-Sports model of the A5 coupe range that will roll out over the next six months or so.Eventually it will consist of five main variants. All feature a direct-injection petrol engine; there's also a turbodiesel; and a choice of six-speed manual, tiptronic or CVT transmission.Some have quattro all-wheel drive, others don't.Here are more numbers. The S5 packs Audi's powerful 4.2 FSI V8, with 260kW/440Nm driven through a slick six-speed manual. (The auto arrives later.)Riding on low-profile 19-inch rubber, it benefits from the latest version of quattro with a default torque split of 40-60 per cent front to rear.This equation adds up to a 0-100km/h sprint time of some 5.1 seconds.These, we can agree, are nice numbers.Like most Audis, they look good and feel good, but always only up to a certain point, because they're undone by yet another two numbers.This new platform will provide the basis for the next generations of Audi, most significantly the A4.Yet despite the front axle being moved as far forward on the stretched wheelbase as is feasible in a configuration where the front wheels drive, the S5's weight distribution is still a decidedly unbalanced 56:44 front-to-rear.That's an improvement on Audi's hooter-heavy and sharp-riding norm. It ensures the S5 will understeer on the same fast stretch of twisting tarmac that a 335i, for instance, would gobble up before asking for more.Yet for all that; actually, partly because of that; the S5 is just about the perfect GT coupe for the time, place and buyer.Audi's quite phenomenal year-on-year growth is all the evidence required that 'sheer driving pleasure,' at least in terms of charting dynamic extremes, is not nearly so important as a superbly appointed cabin, designer looks and an engine note that talks the talk.Audi leaves the envelope stretching to the superb RS4 and startling new R8.For their part, the S5/A5 speak the sort of language Audi's target market wants to hear.The range should also speak to those who've reflexively bought a BMW coupe because the badge is right, but then wondered why it rides like a billycart.(Hint: it's the same reason you have no spare tyre.)It says things that even a must-have-a-Merc merchant might understand, at least those few Benz buyers young enough not to require hearing enhancement.So if this reads like a marketing rave, then the people with designer glasses who work in ateliers have had at least as much to do with this coupe as those with engineering degrees.Having met the S5 with its milder family members earlier this year in Italy, we re-encountered it this week at Phillip Island raceway and on a back-road run outside Melbourne.If it was far more comfortable on the latter, the improvements brought by this new platform were at least evident in the former environment.Turn-in is sharp, almost too sharp for the typically lighter-than-air steering.You wait for the nose to begin pulling wide when pushing through a fast corner, but there is plenty of room to move in before that and a responsiveness that inspires confidence.Firing out of corners, the S5 goes like an Olympic sprinter.Traction is immense, backed up by a tolerant ESP and brakes that have a progressive feel to match their tremendous stopping power.Aside from its always joyous note, the V8 is possessed of a tractability that often removes the need to downshift with the short-throw and easy-shifting manual.Much has been made of the look of the thing, not least by its designer, Walter de Silva.He might at least thank the boffins whose platform reduces the old Audi front overhang to almost pert proportions.The thing is striking rather than beguiling, making an undeniable impression as it fills a rear-view mirror, daytime running lights aglow.It seems almost churlish to mention that high-set sills make it a right bugger to judge where your nose is in relation to the object in front.Rear vision is aided, but not perfected, by enormous wing mirrors that create wind roar when you're in sixth gear at freeway speeds.The thing, of course, is not that you can see out but that people will look at you when you drive by.And in that respect, the S5 does the maths.  

Since late 2004, this thing has acquired the regularity of a metronome, as Audi has been borne along by a tidal swell of new releases to go from prestige pretender to player.With last week's simultaneous launch at the Geneva and Melbourne motor shows of the obscenely desirable S5 coupe, Audi threatens to cause discomfort to the reigning German duumvirate of BMW and Mercedes-Benz.By no means in sales — that remains a remote prospect in this country — but certainly in terms of having models that combine aesthetic and technical sophistication to achieve the elusive "I want" quotient.The S5 is the flagship of a coupe range whose new platform will provide the basis for the all-important, next-generation A4 sedan — the car that must finally take the fight to BMW's perennial 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz's newly launched C-Class.If we dare deduce on the basis of a gala unveiling, a few words with the tech bloke and a quick sit in the driver's seat (and sod it, we do) Audi's compatriots have cause to press the "achtung!" button.Indeed, the failure of staff on the adjoining BMW stand at the Melbourne Motor Show to convincingly feign indifference to the pomp and circumstance surrounding the other Bavarian brand's event was instructive.With the halo S5 to be priced in the incredibly competitive $120,000-to-$130,000 ballpark when released locally in October, we might further deduce that the pricing of the less potent A5s will begin from less than $90K.These, at least intially, are likely to come with the same 3.2-litre FSI petrol V6 shown in Geneva last week and the much-praised 3.0 TDI diesel V6, driven through the latest generation quattro all-wheel-drive train as per the RS4. A turbo petrol four is possible.The S5 also shares the RS4's superb 4.2 FSI V8 — a 260kW/440Nm howling wolf that will punch its 1630kg bulk to 100km/h in a claimed 5.1 seconds — and the RS4's beaut six-speed manual.Soft cogs who can't shift for themselves may have to wait.While all 5s feature a new five-link double wishbone front suspension and a redesigned trapezoidal rear, it's up front — where almost all current Audis thrust out their elongated hooters in dynamically frustrating fashion — that the new order is truly established.The axle has been positioned far forward for a longitudinal engine configured for AWD and the steering rack is lowered to sit ahead of, and close to, the centre line.Visually, this makes for an overhang that's quite pert and a virtual guarantee the S5 will be imbued with quality of ride, balance, agility and steering feel that for the main part utterly eludes the marque.Walter da Silva's exterior design speaks amply for itself: alluring, yet suffused with poise and performance intent.Within, the car is almost too conventionally Audi, with typically peerless fit and finish embellished with sports seats, S badging and a starter button.Behind those upfront, it looks more than tolerable — at least by two-plus-two coupe standards.Until all too recently, Audi was a marque with one model (the RS4) and entire ranges of well-intentioned, quite pretty, but some miles from class-leading, cars.With the new R8 halo supercar, the nearly-upon-us S5/A5 and the promise that holds for Audi's next junior-executive A4, that equation may well be stood on its head.