Audi S5 Cabriolet 2018 review

It’s hard to argue with. The motor is loud, the car is heavy, but that doesn’t stop it gunning forward like a wild brumby - it can reach 100km/h in 5.1 seconds. So it's fast. Being a sports car, it accelerates much easier than the usual SUVs I’ve been driving for family reviews.

It handles beautifully with a smaller steering wheel (#Ihavethisthingwithsteeringwheels), corners well and is an all-round wonderful car to drive along like you’re free as a bird without a family or children at all. Except when you see their cute little windblown faces in the rear-vision mirror, of course. Then it comes flooding back.

There is a 3.0-litre turbo V6 petrol engine that you can feel as soon as you hit the start button. It’s powerful, fast and surprisingly quiet with the top up.

I felt great driving it in the sunshine with the top down through the streets along various beaches we visited while on holiday. It also fared well on a trip out to Wet n' Wild, and actually fared quite well as a temporary family car.

Well, it’s a two-door convertible, so space wasn’t high on the priority list when they were designing this car. But it’s not bad. There’s enough leg room in the front for both me and my 185cm husband. It’s not huge, but it’s an incredible car, so really, who cares?

Oh, the kids. Maybe they cared a tad, and kept asking if we could move our seats forward (my husband in particular). I think they still had enough room though. They’re only little. If I had teenagers who’d inherited my husband’s long legs instead of my little ones, that would be an issue, but for right now, this car did just fine.

You can fit two children’s seats in the back, it’s a four-seater, rather than a five. Again, the point of this car is not to provide space for a family, so you're basically giving up space for a no-roof-sports-car. And we did all fit, beach bags, blow-up pool donuts and all. It’s not what I would describe as spacious, and there are definitely other vehicles that have a bucketload more room, but we made it.

The boot is a good size at 380 litres with the roof up. I was able to fit in full loads of groceries and the aforementioned beach accessories. If the roof is down, there is less bootspace and you’ll find yourself stuffing grocery bags in on the floor of the car.

I’m not sure we have to even go into this. I mean, just look at it. It’s a beautiful car with top down or up. The shape is sleek without falling into rocketship territory, and still looks like a “proper” car. You can just picture it driving along the Italian Amalfi coast, along narrow roads. It has an old-worldly charm to it.

Inside is just as stylish, with quilted leather seats that seem to have been inspired by the House of Chanel. They are heated both front and back. The steering wheel is small and sporty, just the way I like them, and feels beautiful to touch with that special shape Audi gets just right. It makes the driver feel like it’s been fitted to your particular hands. Very personal.

The rear-cross traffic alert with braking assistance kicked in at one point while I was reversing out of the driveway. I’m not sure if it was necessary (there was a car driving by and I may have been going a tad fast for reversing, but wasn’t close to the road), but still, it was reassuring that it worked. There are airbags for front and front side, plus ISOFIX points and top tethers for child seats (tip: you need to pop the lever in the boot to get the back seats down so you can install these).

There’s also adaptive cruise control, a 360-degree parking camera and a semi-autonomous parking system, and a system that'll warn you if there’s a cyclist about when you're about to get out of the car. There is a pop-up roll bar structure which comes up if the car rolls over, ostensibly to protect heads.

The hardtop model got the five-star ANCAP rating, but they don't safety test convertibles.

The Audi S5 Cabriolet comes in at $119,111. Fuel costs for a 3.0-litre turbo V6 engine are more than usual, and while Audi claims 7.9 litres per 100kms, the CarsGuide reviewers say it will most likely use more than that.

It’s covered by Audi’s standard three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty, and services are 12 months/15,000km apart.