This car can sing baritone and tenor, unlike many other cars with eight cylinders under their hood or rear panels. When you’re in the city, stick to sub 3,000 revs, and the motor burbles away unperturbed doing city-legal speeds. Put your foot down a little and it bellows like a big V8 should. More of its character is revealed when you stomp your foot down. The revs climb with an intensity of a more than half-decent sportsbike, the exhaust clears its throat and the bellows suddenly turn into a high-pitched whine which make your heart’s BPM climb almost as fast as the engine’s RPM, while getting your hair to stand on end. The car grunts and clunks its way through the seven gears using the twin clutches, which is something rarely achieved because it shifts almost at the red line; so you never really get past fourth on any normal stretch of road on the city’s outskirts.
The quattro all-wheel drive system also feels extremely able and actually seems to consider 80 km/h around a corner as a walk in the park. There is so much grip on offer, and the optional 275/30 R20 rubber we had on with the optional titanium-finish five-arm rotor deep-dish like wheels stick to the road like the treads had superglue. The ride quality too is pleasantly surprising. For 20” wheels with low-profile tyres, the ride wasn’t half bad, and that’s with the Audi DriveSelect in ‘Dynamic’ mode, the car grunting, snorting and shivering with every downshift. Move to ‘Comfort’ mode, and the whole experience is toned down. Upshifts occur at 6,000 revs and what would otherwise be imperceptible gear shifts are only given away by the ‘brrum’ that accompanies each downshift.
There’s another thing. While other executive cars with powerful engines will show you a cup of coffee in your information display to warn you to focus or take a break from driving, the RS5 simply drops a gear, takes a swig of petrol and lets out a growl with a shiver – more than enough to get your attention, with a few hairs standing on end for good measure. Needless to say, that got my undivided attention better than any ‘ding’ or ‘beep’ has ever managed to.
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