Our view:
What is it about certain body styles that make vehicles which should otherwise drive in the same fashion somehow feel better than their relations? Audi's a little blighter for this peculiar trait. Take, for instance, the
SQ7. It shouldn't really be any more fun than an
SQ8; in fact, the latter ought to be the superior machine, as it has a lower centre-of-gravity, better weight distribution, smoother aerodynamics and a touch less bulk. Yet we know which one we'd have out of the seven-seat SUV and the supposed coupe model. It just seems... naughtier, somehow, that a big family wagon can accelerate and corner with the fury of the SQ7. In the SQ8, everything is all a tad 'meh'.
Same phenomenon positively affects the
RS 6 Avant, which is mechanically identical to and broadly the same in weight as the
RS 7 Sportback and, bless it (we
do like the Q8, honest), the
RS Q8 SUV. And out of these three, which one would we have over the other two in an absolute heartbeat, without a moment's doubt whatsoever? That's right. The estate. Although, throwing in a bit of a curveball, the latest
S8 beats all of its blister-arched relations because an S8 is plain and simple cooler than almost anything in the automotive world. This is an immutable law of the universe and everyone who's even remotely into cars knows it from birth.
Obviously, depending on which model you're driving, this unusual anomaly in critical appraisal can work the other way and such a fate befell the
Audi RS 5 Coupe when we tested it back in 2017. This was a car that promised so much on paper but it transpired that it wasn't half as beguiling a product as the
RS 4 Avant, a vehicle which uses much the same powertrain and underpinnings. So when we booked this Sportback RS 5 in for a week of evaluation, we have to say, dear reader, that without wishing to sound spoilt and ungrateful for this ridiculous, privileged job we do, we felt like we were booking the four-door Ingolstadt express in more out of a sense of professional duty rather than any desire to actually drive the RS 5 Sportback. It would come, we would remain indifferent, it would go again. Ho-hum.
Well, that turned out to be a seriously misguided preconception. Seriously, for whatever reason, the RS 5 Sportback knocks the spots off its two-door relation. Maybe it's to do with the fact the four-door Sportback is 61mm longer than the Coupe, with all of that extra metal in between its axles to account for the extra access points to the passenger compartment, and so that changes its weight distribution and balance. Maybe it's because the Sportback is 35kg heavier that the Coupe, so it settles more on suspension which has presumably been retuned to cope with its additional mass. Maybe, just maybe, it's that old devil called loving a car because it is a
slightly different shape to another, similar machine you're apathetic about.
That the RS 5 Sportback looks better than the two-door should not be in doubt. We're still not convinced about Audi's 'Croydon facelift' treatment of
this generation of A5, which looks as if someone has scraped the car's bonnet back in a forceful manner and left the RS 5's front end with an overly taut, almost rictus grin. But proportionally it's a lovely car to behold and, granted, it's
particularly stunning because it has been finished in Sonoma Green (+£675), which is just the best automotive colour of them all; we will not be taking any further questions on this matter as this time. Or ever.
The interior is also wonderful, with genuine extra room in the back for occupants to luxuriate in that you (understandably) wouldn't enjoy in the Coupe. Plus, up front, there are all the splendid digital dials with RS-specific displays, a pair of terrific bucket seats and... what's this? Physical climate controls?! Hurrah! Yes, the RS 5, being based as it is on a model that arrived before Audi's MMI Touch human-machine interface took over as the manufacturer's infotainment system of choice, does not have the 8.6-inch haptic display down on the transmission tunnel for changing the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. That alone makes this Sportback's dashboard the most intuitively arranged layout in Audi's current catalogue.
But it's the way the Sportback drives which truly astounds. In the RS 5 Coupe, it's all very 'traditional' fast Audi. It remains resolutely foursquare, it grips tenaciously, and you simply point it at a road, depress the throttle and destroy everything around you. Ludicrously fast and capable, sure, but thrilling? Involving? Fun? Nope.
The Sportback, rather remarkably, was an entirely different kettle of fish. It doesn't feel as if it stubbornly wants to cling resolutely onto the tarmac at all corners, so in the middle of bends the driver gets the sensation that they can adjust both the driving line and indeed the entire stance of the car on the throttle alone. The steering was more pleasant, with better weight across the modes and none of the discomfiting, gloopy stickiness just off-centre in Dynamic. Even the 2.9-litre engine sounded better and, no, you can't cite the fitment of the £1,250 RS Sport exhaust system for the difference between the cars because the RS 5 Coupe we drove three years ago had the same bit of kit on it.
In short, we did 525 miles in a week in the RS 5 Sportback, spending a tad more than 11 hours at its flat-bottomed wheel. In that time, it did back-road blasts, it did stop-start urban driving and it did long-distance motorway schleps in equal measure, excelling at all of them and throwing in quite magnificent refinement (minimal wind and tyre noise, accommodating ride quality despite being on optional 20s for a colossal £2,375) to sweeten the deal even further. Better yet, overall economy was of the order of 28.9mpg and the Audi turned in a best of 34.4mpg on a steady, three-hour run from Crawley to Nottinghamshire. For a 450hp V6 petrol with four-wheel drive, an automatic gearbox and a kerb weight of 1,817kg, that's just straight-up astounding economy.
Is the RS 5 Sportback perfect, though? Well no, of course not. Despite its seemingly sharpened ability compared to the RS 5 Coupe, conversely it is not the most fluid car we've ever driven from the halls of Audi Sport GmbH, and we reckon you'd still get more fun at the wheel of the RS 5's rear-driven BMW and Mercedes alternatives. We've already touched on the styling at the nose of the car, which is not exactly to our tastes, but as that's a subjective matter we'll leave it be.
Perhaps the major fly in the ointment here is the price. On the plus side, you want two extra doors on your RS 5, you pay no extra cash for it over the Coupe; as with every other A5 and S5 Sportback, the 450hp model's list figure is exactly the same as its two-door analogue. That means £69,525, but the keen-eyed among you will have already spotted a few pound signs sitting in brackets dotted throughout this review so far, and when you start adding more options to those already listed, things can get out of hand mighty quick. So if you fit Matrix LED headlights with Audi Laser Lights (£870) and a Carbon Black styling package in high-gloss (£770) and an Advanced Key with electric handsfree boot opening (£1,100) and a panoramic glass sunroof (£1,400) and carbon inlays for the dashboard (£995) and an increase in the speed-restricting limiter from 155- to 174mph (£1,500!) and a Bang & Olufsen 3D Sound System (£850) and more, what you end up with is an £85,360 RS 5 Sportback, not one that's the right side of £70,000. This, when the A5 range starts at less than 40 grand.
It's meaty and perhaps more of annoyance is that the big 20-inch wheels and RS Sport exhaust, along with RS Sport suspension with Dynamic Ride Control dampers (at £2,000), tot up to £5,650 of extras which all go a long way to improving the way the Audi handles and sounds. So while you can argue about the necessity of some of the extras added to our test RS 5 Sportback, it's clear than a model with some of the choice options bolted on will almost certainly cost more than £75,000. And that's a lot, isn't it?
However, you get quite the package for your considerable outlay. Not only does it feel alert and engaging when you want it to be, and relaxing, assured and comfortable when you don't, but the RS 5 Sportback is every bit as fast as an Audi Sport model should be. We prefer the proper torque-converter Tiptronic of these bigger-engined hot models to the seven-speed S tronic dual-clutch unit in the
five-pot cars, as it seems to have better responses to big dollops of throttle when it's in its more relaxed modes. And 450hp and 600Nm ensure the Sportback feels every bit as bonkers rapid as its officially quoted stats hint at. This RS 5 has low-speed urgency, it has mid-range might and it loves to rev right out, making a corking noise as it does so. Naturally, you can only enjoy the top end of its powerband in the lower gears, unless you fancy incurring the wrath of the authorities, but sheer, coruscating speed is not something for which this Sportback lacks.
For whatever mysterious reasons, then, the Audi RS 5 Sportback confounded our pre-drive expectations to deliver an experience which was much more enjoyable, involving and plain likeable than the one provided by the last Coupe we tested. Which leads us to an unavoidable truth: all the same ingredients there may be when you're comparing these high-performance Audis' spec sheets, but if you want the best RS 5 variant by some clear distance, pick the one with more doors into the passenger compartment. It's that simple.