The Wall Street Journal-20080111-WEEKEND JOURNAL- The Driver-s Seat -- Audi S5- Audi-s Super -- and Halfway Sensible -- Sports Coupe
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; The Driver's Seat -- Audi S5: Audi's Super -- and Halfway Sensible -- Sports Coupe
So let's say you're as smitten as I am with the Audi R8, that midengine exotic that arrived from Germany last fall. But like me, you can't quite afford its six-figure price, relative bargain that it may be. You don't have the juice with your dealer to get on the waiting list anyway, plus you're kind of afraid of attracting too much attention from the local constabulary. Not to mention that you need a back seat. In other words, the R8 is about the last car you're likely to park in your driveway, so you've already banished it from your mind, and here I am needlessly taunting you.
Well, someone at parent-company Volkswagen must have realized that there are a whole lot of us who fit this description. Rather than squander the halo image of its supercar on a lineup consisting mostly of sedans -- hot as some Audi sedans may be -- the company decided to produce something to better monetize our fanboy-ism: a junior version, a subtly beautiful sports coupe with a back seat but sans midengine configuration and rakish aluminum body. It delivers most of the rest of the R8 package, though, including the engine and interior, yet it sells for about half the price. So where do we sign?
Audi's all-new S5 starts at $52,575, which includes delivery and a $1,300 gas-guzzler tax, and while that first number seems fair when compared with the competition, it's the second that I have a problem with and precisely where my cut-rate R8 fantasy falls apart. The EPA says you should expect a combined 16 miles per gallon from the S5, a number borne out over 400-plus miles of driving. While you can certainly choose not to care about such matters -- at least for a few more years, anyway -- I find driving a car with teenage fuel economy entirely too adolescent for my taste.
If the miserable fuel economy isn't a deal killer, there is still plenty to like about the S5, from its 354-horsepower V8 to its super- size glass roof panel. The interior is first-rate, per Audi's reputation, and even if the company hasn't remedied the steep ergonomic learning curve of all its fussy electronic controls, once you master them it's much easier going than the continual frustration of BMW's plodding iDrive interface or the confusing Mercedes Comand system. While the back seat in the S5 isn't spacious, it's there for the children and pets, and it does fold down to allow all manner of practical use and access to the trunk.
The best part of my test car, however, was the one piece of equipment that hadn't come from the factory: its tires. Had someone at Audi of America not made the sage choice to install dedicated winter tires in place of the standard high-performance rubber on my test vehicle, this column would have been snowed out by a New Year's Eve blizzard. Instead, I frolicked through unplowed streets and back-road drifts like a kid who got a new sled for Christmas. It's quite a paradox that this car was at its best when driven in the worst conditions, upending the usual incompatibility of sports cars and snow thanks to Audi's Quattro all-wheel-drive system. It makes the S5 a better midwinter therapy than a weekend getaway to Miami Beach.
Not that the S5 isn't a hoot on dry tarmac. Its 4.2-liter, direct- injection engine is similar to the one in the R8, and even though it's down 66 horses, it still zings to its 7,000-rpm redline, making lovely noises all the way. Despite its conventional placement in the front of the car, the engine has been mounted farther back in the chassis than in previous Audis, which helps the S5 achieve a desirable front-to- rear weight balance of 51% to 49%. Combined with a rear-biased power split between the axles, the S5 squats down and corners better than any 3,891-pound car should. The suspension is firm, but the car is still comfortable over long drives, equipped as it is with the sort of particularly snug and supportive seats you'd expect in a vehicle of this caliber.
The S5 is as single-mindedly sporting as any V8-powered, Teutonic muscle car on the road, certainly more so than its principle foil, BMW's bloated 6-Series coupe. I'm sure as much as Audi's marketers in Ingolstadt, Germany, want you to think of the S5 as the R8's little brother, they also want you to ignore its Bavarian rival's new, all- wheel-drive 335cxi, the 300-horsepower, twin-turbocharged, six- cylinder coupe that costs some $9,000 less than the S5 and can manage highway gas mileage in the mid-20s. (Let's not even mention the 414- horsepower BMW M3 due out by April.)
But Audi should be rightfully encouraged in its efforts to usurp some of BMW's stranglehold on the market for practical sports cars, and the S5 is a significant step toward that goal. That Audi chose to introduce the S5 in the U.S. months in advance of the V6-powered A5 model on which it is based says a lot about the company's new-found determination to be taken seriously as an enthusiast brand. Further proof: The only transmission now available in the S5 is a six-speed manual, though an automatic should appear in April. In fact, about the only thing I found missing from the S5 that might have improved the driving experience was a conventional emergency brake -- it's hard to do rally-style pivot turns with an electronic parking brake, even in the snow.
