Styling
Fundamentally, whether you like the Audi S5 Avant's appearance or not will depend more on the base A5 material, rather than the touches which are specific to the fast V6 model. Some aren't fans of the A5's sleeker, less distinctively 'Audi' styling, and it's certainly still odd to see the 'S5' badge on the bootlid of an
Avant, where normally you'd expect to see 'A4', but for what it's worth we think the S5 Avant looks good. It has some of the usual Audi 'S' signfiers, like silver detailing for the door mirrors, roof rails, side sills and around the front air intakes, as well as quad exhausts at the rear; because it's a TFSI petrol, these are real exits and not the egregious fakes we sometimes saw on the
S5's TDI predecessors. So it's a handsome thing, especially when finished in attractive Grenadine Red metallic paint as on our test car.
Interior
Again, the feelings you have for the Audi's interior will depend mainly on how deeply you loathe massive touchscreens and 'digital everything' interfaces. And also again, we might be flying in the face of prevailing public sentiment, but we don't have a major issue with the S5's cabin. Granted, the Digital Stage is ginormous and dominating, comprising an 11.5-inch Virtual Cockpit which doesn't seem quite as configurable as the system in the old A4 the new car replaces, while the 14.5-inch MMI infotainment system has perpetrated the common ergonomic crime of the 2020s and gobbled up the climate control systems into its display - removing the intuitive physical control bank of yore. Technophiles can go even further in the S5's cabin and option up both a 10.9-inch passenger touchscreen and an augmented reality head-up display, which may further displease a good proportion of the automotive community.
However, the system works well and it at least keeps the climate controls easily to hand, while there can't be much complaint about the way everything in the Audi's passenger compartment is bolted together. Unlike some other Germanic companies who have started to display worrying signs of cost-cutting in their interiors lately, mentioning no names (cough,
BMW X3, cough), the S5's use of excellent materials throughout the cabin and resounding sense of heft to all of its surfaces makes this a superb place to have to spend some time. And, going back to the tech, there's no real point lamenting the set-up in the S5/A5 family, because it's now the corporate interface for the entire Audi portfolio going forwards: see both the
A6 e-tron and incoming
third-gen Q5 SUV for further details.
Practicality
If you're going to criticise anything about the Audi S5 Avant's interior, perhaps focus on the practicality. Even as an Avant, its quoted official boot space of 448 litres is some way off what a plain old
BMW 3 Series saloon will provide these days, while legroom in the second row is only average for this market segment, rather than exceptional. Naturally, those buying an S5 Avant are not going to exactly
complain about how useful it is as a family chariot, because unless you're carting four six-foot-plus passengers and a bootful of luggage around all the time, it'll do its daily duties just fine. But if you're an Audi fan hoping we'd be regaling you with some class-leading figures for the all-new A5/S5 line in this department, you might be a bit disappointed with space in both the second row and the cargo area.
Performance
With a couple of 2.0-litre turbocharged four-pots underpinning the rest of the A5 range thus far - there's either a 150- or 204hp TFSI petrol, or a 204hp TDI 48-volt mild-hybrid (MHEV) diesel - the S5 clearly sits apart. Its 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 is also a 48V MHEV to make it as 'green' as it can possibly be given the circumstances, but its principal reason for being is power and speed: it develops 367hp for an 800rpm plateau from 5,500rpm on, with a significant 550Nm handling the lower-revs slopes to make the Audi suitably quick from idle to redline. As with any S-model, it has all the benefits of quattro all-wheel drive, in this case linked to a seven-speed dual-clutch (DSG) transmission.
Remarkably, despite the fact it weighs the wrong side of two tonnes in this specification and therefore has a power-to-weight ratio of a middling 180hp/tonne, the traction advantages of quattro mean Audi claims a rapid 4.5-second 0-62mph time for the S5 Avant, and in practice it feels every bit as brawny as those figures suggest. Occasionally, you can get that slight hesitance that all VW Group DSGs exhibit from time to time, especially if you're trying to nip out of a junction or onto a roundabout into a smaller gap in the traffic flow, but generally the turbos spool up quickly, the S5 dumps its 550Nm of torque into the mix and the Avant snarls off up the road with alacrity; it's not the most raucous soundtrack in the world as it's an 'S' when all's said and done, not an RS, but generally the acoustics accompanying the sheer straight-line speed in the S5 Avant are very pleasing.
So are both the throttle response and the brake feel, which means controlling the Audi throughout all its different drive modes and in varying different motoring scenarios (i.e., whether you're crawling through a rural village, stop-start manoeuvring in a town or city, or cruising along a motorway at 70mph) is a breeze. And it shouldn't even break the bank to run either, because although we only got 26.6mpg out of it on an hour-long test run, that was on a route that was predominantly twisting B-roads... where we were, um, enjoying the S5's drivetrain and chassis prowess, shall we say? Therefore, we have little doubt that it would easily attain in excess of 30mpg during regular usage, which is not bad at all for a 2,040kg V6 estate with a sub-five-second 0-62mph time.
Ride & Handling
This is a very typical Audi S performance model, in that it's massively secure and remarkably quick point-to-point no matter the prevailing conditions, if not the most thrilling thing you'll ever drive. However, that's why we always tend to find ourselves favouring the S variants more than the RS cars, because you then come into the driving experience with lower expectations, and the S-models then tend to happily exceed them.
It's the same thing with the new S5 Avant. If you can filter through the inherently foursquare attitude of its chassis, you notice that it actually has impressive body and wheel control, a certain degree of adjustability on the throttle (and even traces of rear-end bias), and decent steering. On the latter score, we could do with a little more weighting in Dynamic mode particularly, which is about the one area where the driver interface is a little too woolly for a proper performance model, but overall the Audi is highly polished and enjoyable.
It also rides the best of any A5/S5 we've yet encountered. Driven back-to-back with a pricey 2.0 TDI saloon in Launch Edition spec (see 'Value', below), roughly analogous to S line trim in terms of its chassis set-up, the S5 Avant was far more comfortable and quiet for far more of the time. With its platform designed to be fitted with sporty suspension (20mm-lower with a specific 'S' tune and damper control too) and large alloys (in this case, lovely 20-inch twin-spoke Audi Sport rims), it never fidgets and rattles as much as the 2.0-litre TDI did on much the same roads, while the S5 loses nothing in terms of composure nor the intrusion of exterior noise contributors into its passenger compartment at higher speeds. In short, the S5 handles better than any other A5, and it also has superior ride and refinement too.
Value
While at no point are we about to tell you that a near-70-grand Audi A5, née A4, is in any way a bargain, this S5 Avant nevertheless seemed to be pretty reasonable in the wider scheme of things on the day we drove it in the UK... because as we've already mentioned above, we also drove an A5 saloon (it's a fastback, Audi, stop trying to kid us on!) with the 204hp TDI engine on the same day, in top-ranking Launch Edition. And its list price was a breath-taking (for all the wrong reasons) £58,495. So we'd say that only having to fork out another £10,000 (give or take) for the S5 variant which massively improves the performance, ride and handling capabilities doesn't seem that bad to us. But maybe we've just become blasé to modern car prices, we don't know.
Verdict
A difficult one to rate this, because we were on the verge of giving the highly likeable and urbane Audi S5 Avant another half-star - mainly because it drives sweetly, it has a fabulous drivetrain of the kind that won't be around for much longer, and it doesn't even seem ludicrously pricey in relation to the rest of the A5 range. That said, it'll make far more sense to private buyers than it will to business users and it's therefore going to be of minority interest in the UK, and there will be plenty of folk who don't like the smoothed-off exterior looks and the highly digitised interior of the S5. However, if you are in the market for a rapid, assured wagon in the premium class, the S5 Avant needs to be very near the top of your list as things stand.
