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Audi gets me. I’ve never owned a car from the four-ring brand, but their current lineup features practical, sporting, go-anywhere, all-wheel-drive vehicles in all manner of sizes and shapes. Usually sleek ones at that.
More than this, as other automakers flee from anything that isn’t an SUV, Audi’s car lineup is proliferating. The brand not only sells three different station wagons—the A4 and A6 Allroads as well as the lunatic six-figure RS6 Avant—it offers a stunning variety of stunning hatchbacks, including the A6-based A7 and its sporty derivatives, the S7 and RS7 as well as the A4-based A5 and RS5 Sportbacks.
I’ve driven the other models in the past, but I just spent a week with a top-of-the-line $65,295 (including a $1,095 destination fee) S5 Sportback Prestige and, as a middle child, I identified with its Goldilocks just-rightness.
Since Audi doesn’t offer a regular, not-jacked-up A4 or S4 Avant wagon here in the States, as it does elsewhere, this cleverly packaged five-door is the next best thing, or maybe even better. It also doesn’t require the, er, aesthetic compromises, of its opposite number from BMW, the 4 Series Gran Coupe.
Though Sport is right there in this vehicle’s name, this is not the sportiest of sport sedans, hatchbacks or wagons. Other reviewers may complain about the lack of Schick sharpness in the S5 Sportback’s on-road manners, and they wouldn’t be wrong. BMW’s competitive M340i and M440i Gran Coupe are sharper corner carvers, and even the formerly staid Teutons from Mercedes-Benz have enhanced the handling and steering feel in their AMG C-Class variants to outrival Audi.
But that kind of misses the point. If you want full-tilt sport, Audi will gladly take $77,295 for its RS5 Sportback. (To start, it’s theoretically possible to option the RS5 up to nearly six figures). But all-out speed is not what the S5 is about.
Balancing Sportiness And Liveability
The S5 Sportback is sporting, without any of the alienating harshness that lustier iterations offer. Credit goes, in part, to its 349 horsepower, 369 foot-pound 3.0-liter turbocharged V6, which puts power to all four 20-inch wheels via a paddle-shiftable 8-speed automatic transmission.
This allows it to snap off 0-60 mph runs in the low four-second range, and feel plenty fast doing so, especially useful when accelerating from a yield on a New York Parkway, with their tiny, 1920s-style on-ramps. Yet it’s the adjustable Audi Drive Select system that deserves the most credit.
While the similar BMW system I tried recently failed to yield from pulverizing, even in the most comfortable setting, the S5 Sportback in Comfort mode became appropriately cushy for the sciatic posterior of this middle-aged gentleman. And when I wanted some German dynamism, the Dynamic setting provided just the proper soupcon of sportif.
Adaptive dampers, available on the $2,500 S-Sport package, might enhance this differential even further (it also includes a torque-vectoring rear differential that puts power to the grippiest tire even more accurately) but alas, our tester didn’t include that option.
It did have a host of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that kept it in its lane, at a set speed, and in avoidance of obstacles front, side, and rear. Its brakes, like most modern brakes, felt uncannily mysterious to me: sometimes eminently grabby, sometimes imminently lackadaisical.
But when I had to stomp them to avoid a collision with one of our local cervine projectiles upstate, they ground us to an immediate halt. Some Drama ensued as the ADAS lit up the dash like a roller disco. But, aside from a bit of breathlessness, we and the deer escaped unscathed.
A Master of Understatement
Whilst rocking forward in our seats and watching our almost-venison canter into the brush, we had a moment to get up close and personal with the dash of the S5 Sportback, and note just how lovely it is. In pictures, Audi interiors can come off as plain, even spartan, but like an Ad Reinhardt painting the close details reveal considerably more depth.
Audi wisely provides hard switches, dials, and buttons for regularly-used features like infotainment volume, changing music tracks/stations, and climate control, and their material quality, like everything in the cabin, is top-notch and falls readily and pleasantly to hand. (Linger upon the knurling!) And the trim bits, whether rendered in metal, leather, or any manner of plastic—including carbon fiber or “carbon fiber”—are of high quality and fit, like the opposite of an Ikea bookshelf.
The same is true of the exterior, which looks muscular from every angle but never over the top or gimmicky. The S5’s closest competitor, the BMW 4 Series, offers much more controversial looks thanks to its wildly oversized grilles, but it does match it on practicality. The C-Class is similarly understated but comes only as a sedan (though the previous-generation coupe and convertible are still on sale this year) with a modest trunk.
In a time when people insist they need a crossover “for space,” the S5 Sportback packs in almost as much useful cargo volume (21.8 cubic-feet behind the rear seats) as the company’s Q5 crossover (25.9), and more than the 4 Series Gran Coupe (16.6). Fold the seats down and the SUVs prevail, but what if you’re regularly traveling with four people? The S5 Sportback’s rear seat also offers fractionally more head and legroom than the 4 Series Gran Coupe.
Digital Details
Audi was an early pioneer in the fully digital dashboard and continues this tradition here.
With both phone-mirroring Apple CarPlay/Android Auto software in the central screen and a head-up display that projects information like speed and navigation directions, the pretty color LCD screen in front of the driver isn’t as useful as it once was, but it still looks good. Unfortunately, unlike other Audis such as the R8 and TT, this instrument panel display doesn’t also integrate with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
Strangely less useful, as well, is the absence of a key meter in the instrument panel cluster: there is no gas gauge. The S5 Sportback will tell you how many more miles you can drive until the tank is empty, but it takes a number of button presses to get the traditional E-to-F meter to appear.
Perhaps Audi is trying to soft-pedal us into our EV future? I cannot think of any other reason why the company would make this choice.
Still, I’m an optimist, so I’m willing to see the tank as half full. The S5 Sportback is a full package: a sporty, sharp-suited all-arounder worthy of consideration by anyone who thinks only an SUV can provide utility.
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