New Audi S5 Review

I’m really looking forward to this journey, not just because three very wise men have sent me on it, but because I’m very intrigued by the Audi S5. I owned a previous generation S4, and I’ve been watching the release of this car with a lot of interest, and that has turned me into a doubter. I doubt if I feel like Audi have fallen into a bunch of weird modern mistakes with this vehicle.

The door handles have sort of gone. The physical buttons have mostly left the building. The screens have got bigger. There’s more screens. There’s YouTube on the screens. There’s video games on the screens. If you come back here, you can change the tail lights to eight different designs if you want to. These are gimmicky upgrades. I do like that one, but they’re gimmicky.

The BMW M340i Benchmark 🚗

The BMW M340i is fantastic. That car has ruled this class of car for half a decade. That’s half a decade that Audi have had to come back out on top. I don’t know what you’ve done, Audi. What have you done? First of all, what Audi have done is remove the A4 and S4 completely. They’re all rolled into the five now. But that might not be all bad because this is a new platform, which means some new design language, some new market-dependent shapes, and yes, a new interior, but also some funky driving upgrades that can make it do things it wasn’t able to before.

New Platform and Transmission Upgrades 🛠️

Gone is the ZF transmission. Now we have a 7-speed dual-clutch transmission. Am I crazy? Does this all add up to the Germans trying to make the A5 and S5 a little bit more emotional this time around? Or as they say in German, emotional. Okay, I thought it would be some crazy fun word, but I guess it’s spelled the same way. Gulpant. There we go. There’s an alternative. Some things are similar. The A5 still has a four-cylinder engine, and the S5 still has a rather potent turbocharged V6, but it’s new, and this time it has 367 horsepower. That’s a bit more than last time, but still less than the BMW. New Audi S5 Review

Driving Impressions: Smooth but Heavy 🚘

Now, how does it feel? It’s quite aggressive, actually. 4.69 to 100 km/h. Not bad. Still a very spry car. What it isn’t though, and I’m going to upset some people here, is thrilling, and it hasn’t been for years. The S5 is very good at what it does, but it is by no means a sports car. The previous generation steering was dead as a doornail. The throttle response was meh. The transmission also not particularly exciting. And dynamically, the only language the car spoke was under steer.

These are all things that over the next hundreds of miles, I really want to explore because I’d love to say that this is a better S5 in spite of or maybe in addition to the merit that is the new technology that they’ve put in here. And so the miles began to rack up as I made my way toward the western sky. The S5 was doing its S5 thing. It was smooth. The sound system was good. The CarPlay behaved perfectly. Overtaking power was strong. And the car even sounded pretty good. Europec ones like this have a mild hybrid as well that even allows it to go fully electric at parking lot speeds. We don’t get that in North America, annoyingly, but I did get on with it. But then it does add weight and complication. And at 4,300 lb, this thing weighs more than the already fat as freick C43. New Audi S5 Review

Finding Fun on Exciting Roads 🛣️

Many hours later, I finally found some fun roads and had some more thoughts. Update from the bridge now that I’ve got a few more miles in here. The ride is great. The new platform has done some great improvements for it, the adaptive dampers. This has been a wonderful, wonderful cruiser. But now, as I enter these more exciting roads, I’m going to switch it to a more exciting setting. Dynamic. That’s not a very fun graphic, is it? It just turns the car a bit.

Audi power still absolutely great. Effective. The transmission. I’ve really got on with this DCT. It’s snappy. It doesn’t punish you as you approach a traffic light like the last one did a bit. It sort of lurched as it went through the gears. The steering, well, apparently Audi really cared this time. In fact, there’s a graph from an Audi presentation showing how much focus they’re putting on steering precision and steering feel this time. And I’ve actually managed to find a photo of the person in charge of that project. Yeah, it’s still completely lifeless. No improvement there. It’s not worse. It still weights up a bit. But let’s be honest, if steering feel could make or break an Audi’s success, they’d have been resigned to the annals of history long ago.

Has the S5 Fallen Victim to Modern Trends? 🤔

Has the Audi S5 fallen victim to the enshittening of everything? Some would say yes. First of all, we’ve been denied some things in North America. I got a bone to pick with you, Audi, because how dare you make a wagon, a vant as you call it, and not send it our way.

And you’ve also not made a coupe this time. So not cool. This is the only version in this shape that North America is going to get. And it’s bigger now than the Sportback was. I don’t know why it needed to get bigger. We have an A6 and an A7 and an A8. Looking at the front, we’ve lost the SGE from the front. All of the S’s have. That used to be the code that something was spicy was going on.

We still at least have the chrome wing mirrors. That is a sign of S. My S4 had that. I was very proud of it. It looks better contrasted with a color, which apparently this is. This is horizon blue. No, it’s gray. Sorry Audi. That’s a really boring spec actually. And we haven’t got the black package, which would surround this in black and make the grill black, which I think looks exciting against the color. As it stands, not so fascinating.

The rings, sure, they used to look metal. They look really plasticky now with this white and dark gray thing. Otherwise, yeah, they’ve gone a bit electric looking. The profile still looks pretty good. S5. It looks great in motion. Tail lights, they’ve gone full RS7, the full bar across. And even though we don’t call this a Sportback this time, it does have a nice big hatch. Huge access. All in all, I reckon this is quite a safe change on the outside. And yes, the door handles, even though they’re not as good as they used to be, they’re fine. They work fine.

Evaluating the S5’s Interior 🧑‍🚗

This interior then, let’s talk about it. The steering wheel. The logo right away. Everyone hates the logo instead of the metal. It’s two-dimensional now. It used to be you could feel it. Right now, it’s just flat. I also think that this is the steering wheel that I would expect to see on a Q8. I really liked the circular, the sort of double circle going on. Also, we’ve gone to these sort of haptic slidy buttons. They are a panel though. You can click them, and I’ve got on with them just fine.

You’ve got a second screen. Why? We’ve got the time. You can see my miles per hour, and you can see the album. It’s good if you’re nosy. I immediately click on the map. And you can input stuff that feeds into here. That makes sense. I’m thinking about my use case. Like my girlfriend’s sitting shotgun. I would love for her to be able to see where we’re going instead of we pass the exit, and then she says, oh, there it is. Miss it. Well, it’s also good because the passenger can do that while I’m distracted with all the other haptic buttons going on. Like the ones on the door, they’re now haptic.

I don’t know why that is. And they just don’t feel so satisfying. And as much as this is a button, and as much as I’ve got on with it, it doesn’t come close to the tactility of the previous generation. And I don’t like feeling like we’ve gone backwards. And there are places, and I do think the materials throughout this cabin are pretty good. This feels nice. The door cards feel really solid. The carbon inlay is nice, too. The carbon is love. You got on the center console here as well.

But some things feel really cheap. These rear, what are these called? The sun visors. It has a Hey Audi. Hey Audi, turn off the steer. It listens to you. It understands. According to chat GPT, under steer is a handling characteristic that cannot be turned off. Adjusting driving style, suspension, and tires. It’s a driver mod that steers a driver mod.

Cool Tech Features ✨

The big screen. I don’t mind. The black levels are still amazing. The only problem I really do have is that it just becomes so generic. They’ve added some lighting tech all across here that it changes colors depending on what you’re doing. So, if I indicate right, I get a bit of green there. Indicate left, I get a green there. We saw similar stuff in the E-Class and the Tesla Model 3. I like it. There’s some great stuff going on here. The new panoramic roof has this electrochromatic whatever it is. Look at that. You can choose. It’s sequential. It has a sequential moon. Really cool. I like that. That’s a good bit of tech.

Comfortable Seats but Missing Details 🪑

The seats. When people ask me what I miss about the S4, my answer is always the seats. Even though the Golf R seats are great, the S4 seats were magnificent. I have the red seats in my SQ5. My girlfriend hates them. Completely different. They are so comfortable, and the stitching is nice. The S in the headrest or whatever. Yeah. So, we’ve lost the stitch.

Now, we’ve got this sort of plasticky S. I really don’t like this. I really don’t like like I’m usually, maybe it’s kind of, no, this is terrible. This is just not nice. It lights up. Things that light up in cars. New features are expensive. That’s how you know it’s expensive. But I do think the seats are equally comfortable. And the back, because it is slightly bigger, is slightly more spacious. It was never an issue, but now it’s even more not an issue.

Surprising Handling on a Racetrack 🏁

I seem to accidentally have ended up on a racetrack here in Wales. I’ll have to get off it as quick as I can, which means giving it all the beans it’s got. The transmission feels good out here. That sounds nice. And then I got curious. What does happen if you throw it into a corner? The answer is something incredibly alien. Yes, that’s right. The rear of the new S5 can step out on throttle. What? Unlike my dad, it only steps out temporarily, but when it does, it’s mighty.

This doesn’t have torque rear mode like the RS3. So, whatever they’ve done to that diff, they have chased some exciting stuff. I’m very impressed with that. And apparently, it’s not just the diff. Optimized dampers, increased camber, stiffer rear control arms, and a bunch of other little things all add up to this. It under steers still, and yeah, it’s a 4,300lb pig, but it also can drift. It always had the other ones. This is a new thing. My S4 can do that. That’s highly impressive, Audi. Just make sure that wasn’t a fluke. Yeah, that’s over steer in an Audi. What is going on in a big Audi? It’s a handful. I like it. An S5 that challenges me.

Final Thoughts on the S5 🏆

I started a doubter, but along my journey, most, not all, of my concerns have been squashed. The loss of maybe the best buttons in the biz sucks, but some of the new tech is cool. The styling, well, I actually managed to park this next to a previous gen S-line on the mountain, and honestly, that made me warm to the new one a lot. Also, probably because it’s just new, it got quite a lot of looks even in the blue gray. Add that little surprise over steer discovery, and yeah, you can tell the development of the new S5 has been pulled in a few different directions a bit. New Audi S5 Review

Enough that in my mind, they all sort of cancel each other out, meaning the S5’s final score remains pretty much the same. Does that mean the M340i is still the champion? Well, here’s what I’ll say. The new S5 is good enough that if you preferred it to the BMW for any reason, you would not be making the wrong choice. Also, let’s not forget the main point of these cars is luxury and speedy motoring. For genuine fun, you cannot beat lightweight like an MX5 or a GR86 or something even more ridiculous.

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