It's 5 a.m. in Andorra, a tax haven masquerading as a country high in the Pyrenees. It's summer, so the ski hills and duty-free malls are empty. Right now, Andorra is the world's nicest ghost town.
We have a flight out of Toulouse, France, in a few hours. There's no airport in Andorra, so we'll drive north, winding out of the Pyrenees to slog a few kilometres across French highways, hopefully avoiding the gendarmerie. There's no traffic. The sun is an hour away. We have Audi's latest supercoupe, the RS 5 with 450 horsepower. This should be good.
The RS 5 has 450 horsepower.
On mornings like this, coffee seems unnecessary. The high-beams light up a ghostly black-and-white scene ahead. Off the side road, beyond too-thin metal barriers, it's black. Probably best not to see the sheer drop.
I can't recall which car-company CEO said it, but the gist was that he thought of his company not as a provider of transportation, but of entertainment. This is true if you've ever driven a McLaren or Lamborghini. Some cars get you from A to B, others entertain you. Like an Avengers movie, this latter type offers a whiz-bang spectacle of speed, light and sound.
Before setting off, the all-new-for-2018 RS 5 requires a preflight checklist. Engine, gearbox, steering set to Dynamic: check. Suspension set to comfort: check. Exhaust note: Dynamic. Red seat-belt: click. It feels very Top Gun.
The RS 5 is unfailingly precise.
With no traffic to worry about, we enter each roundabout faster than the last. Yanking the steering wheel right, then left to clip the centre, then right again, the car grips and goes. No fuss, little body roll, neat and tidy. It's impossible to tell how much grip the tires have – the variable ratio steering doesn't transmit much information back to the driver – but it is unfailingly precise. Any speed you want to go on public roads seems to be well within the RS 5's comfort zone. If anything, it's a little aloof.
On faster, flowing bends, the RS 5 carves corners like a skier, making elegant arcs. For the RS model, Audi Sport reinforced the regular A5 body around the front wheels. Combined with stiffer bushings, it makes for a crisp turn-in.
On these unfamiliar roads, it's reassuring to have a car that's as forgiving as the RS 5. It responds effortlessly to mid-corner corrections. When a bend tightens unexpectedly and the guardrail is fast approaching, you can ask the front tires for more grip and they oblige. Need to dab the brakes mid-corner? No problem. The Audi is rock-steady.
Mid-corner corrections are no problem for the rock-steady RS 5.
Powering out of yet another hairpin bend, there's a hint of lag before the turbo hits its stride. Above 1,900 rpm, the twin-turbo V-6 is putting out its maximum 443 lb-ft of torque. The horsepower dial on the dash winds up steadily until the engine peaks at 450 horsepower. Those are dramatic numbers but the effect is anything but. The Quattro all-wheel-drive system puts the power down without wheelspin through an eight-speed automatic. A regular automatic replaces the double-clutch gearbox from the previous RS 5. The old 'box couldn't handle the new motor's torque.
To provoke any hint of oversteer you have to turn in hard, lift, flatten the throttle and, even then, you'll only get a whiff. The Quattro system is always working to keep the car straight. It's not tail-happy like Audi Sport's smaller RS 3.
Speeding down the mountains, the exhaust note should be echoing from the hills like we're in The Sound of Music, but it's not. There's a little noisemaker under the front window that produces a distant rumble below 3,000 rpm but it's too quiet, even with the exhaust in Dynamic mode.
It looks like a summer superhero blockbuster, with flared wheel arches and bazooka-sized exhaust tips, but the RS 5 aims to do more than just entertain.
And here's the strange thing about Audi's supercoupe. It's not pure entertainment. It looks like a summer superhero blockbuster, but doesn't act like one. Look at those flared wheel arches, huge ceramic brakes, bazooka-sized exhaust tips. The sheetmetal looks like it's stretched to the limit over rippling muscles. All it's missing is the cape and unitard.
The RS 5's rivals all clearly put entertainment ahead of practicality. BMW's M4 is a twitchy beast. Driving it fast can feel like your head is inside a lion's mouth. AMG's C 63 has such a glorious soundtrack, you could almost forgive it for not handling so well. Except it does handle brilliantly. In both cases, if all you want is to get from A to B, there are cheaper coupes that do a better job. They'll get you to your destination without turning you into a puddle of adrenalin.
Despite its rivals' singular focus, the RS 5 was never meant to be pure entertainment – it was always meant to be more of a compromise.
"The idea was to make a very sporty car that feels very safe," said Matthias Nothling, technical project manager on the RS 5. "You have everyday usability, like a normal A5."
Audi hasn’t announced pricing, but the RS 5 is estimated to cost $85,000, almost double the price of the A5 coupe.
The A5 coupe starts at $46,000. The RS 5 will cost an estimated $85,000. (Audi hasn't announced pricing.) It begs the question: If it's not all about entertainment, are the power, features and handling of the RS 5 really worth double the price of an A5?
The reason for pushing the RS 5 in this softer direction was customer feedback.
"We know our customers pretty well," said Benjamin Holle, product marketing manager for the RS 5. "Yes, I admit we probably changed it – not in a more sharp direction like these AMG or M things – but with this everyday-usability/high-performance mixture in mind."
Not only is it what customers of the old RS 5 were asking for, but
Holle said positioning the new RS 5 this way will attract new customers, people who wouldn't otherwise buy a high-performance RS model.
The RS 5 hasn’t quite pulled off a balance between entertainment and practicality.
Like Andorra, caught between France and Spain, the RS 5 finds itself caught between entertainment and transportation. The features that make a car entertaining – loud exhaust, snappy gearshifts, stiff suspension, telepathic handling and an engine with a thirst for premium gas – also make it lousy as daily transportation.
Audi Sport has done an admirable job of trying to split the difference, to merge these two types of cars into a single do-it-all machine. It has come closer than any other auto maker, but still hasn't quite pulled it off. Even with its myriad adjustments and settings, the RS 5 sacrifices pure entertainment for usability. While gearheads may lament this softer direction, Holle is probably right: This compromise will broaden its appeal.
The RS 5 is comfortable, quiet and civilized. I forgot I was in Audi's flagship supercoupe until I looked down at the speedo and was shocked to find we were cruising at an un-gendarmerie-friendly 170 kilometres an hour. We arrived in Toulouse relaxed and well ahead of schedule.
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