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AUDI can not build a sports car. Everybody knows that. B7 RS4, the disruptive R8 coupe and the astonishing R10 TDI racer – a diesel that dominated at Le Mans even when Ingolstadt voluntarily used the same engines in the 24-hour race as it is used in practice and qualifying.
So it should be that it's a pool of hugely talented chassis and powertrain people at Audi. What's truly frustrating is that this rich vein of dynamic know-how has been all over the world by the might of marketing and design, the power of the brand strangely compromised road cars.
The premise of this test, therefore, is to discover the latest RS5 comes from the 'good Audi', the crew who gave us the 2010 RS5 V8, a true collector's piece for the connoisseur of plow-on understeer. Even if it's from the training camp, it'll have its work cut out against the BMW M4 Pure and the Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe. The M4 does not brook too many surprises, the M3 Cup / M4 bloodline represents a sustainable class benchmark.
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The Pure trim is an Australia-only model that strips out big-ticket items like adaptive LED lights, leather and premium audio system. Mechanically, it only differs from the M4 Competition by 20- to 19-inch alloys. The Pure shares the Competition's 331kW / 550Nm 3.0-liter twin-turbo six and has a similar suspension tune, though our test featured the 20s optioned back in (for $ 2500 more). With a $ 139,000 base price, the M4 Pure is comfortably the most affordable car.
The AMG has clearly been on the juice, now sportsing muscular wheelarch bulges, fat rubber and an aggression that is entirely absent from its comparatively snake-hipped C43 sibling. This is a stagnant stance works well, this remedial work fixing the standard cuts rather than apologetic rear end. The only V8 of the trio, the 375kW / 700Nm 4.0-liter Merc Fronts up with the most grunt and the heftiest sticker price of $ 163,612. Add $ 9900 to tested, complete with AMG ceramic front stoppers.
Slotting neatly between these two bookends comes the 331kW / 600Nm 2.9-liter V6 Audi RS5 which has been sensibly pitched at $ 156,600. The eye-catching Sonoma green paintwork, an extended carbon package and a Technik package, which includes color head-up display, Matrix LED lights and a Qi wireless charger, bumps that up to $ 179,346 as-tested .
FIRING UP more than 1000kW of aggro at 6am is going to make you unpopular, even in a town as octane-addled as Bathurst. The merc's bent-eight emits exactly the correct frequency to turn into windows into giant drum skins, bleary-eyed curtain twitchers unable to figure out which one to put their eyes on. It's a fat, meaty wub-wub with an old-school appeal that sounds anything but turbo-neutered. The M4 is the midrange, with the RS5 adding some tinnitus treble to really round the sonic dam.
Received wisdom has it that the C63 is going to be the hooligan here, the point-and-squirt hot rod that's long on drama but light on subtlety. It plays up to that casting, initially at any rate, with a wilful determination to bend the coding of its control -shell Samsonite roller. Race mode has your foot bouncing on the throttle pedal like a Tullamarine taxi driver with St Vitus's dance.
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By contrast, the M4 feels like if Munich has commissioned Tempur for the damper tune. By most normal measures it's still firm, but there is a degree of suppleness that's missing from the Benz. The bandwidth between the M4's and the C63's arc between acceptable and vertebra-clacking, while the Audi effectively has two damper settings. Comfort is where you'll stay almost all the time, giving the RS5 a genuinely plush GT car ride, with Sport being reserved for smoothly surfaced twisties. On typically scabby country roads the latter will come into contact with the roof lining a little too often for comfort. Kiss goodbye to your sunnies if you occasionally prop them atop your noggin.
Snapper Wielecki (33 ° 33'18.22 "S, 150 ° 8'36.31" E, if you're interested), which requires a fair degree of commitment to make the cars look lively for his Canon. It's here that the Mercedes shines, with just enough reassuring bodyroll and a beautiful, buttery transition into power oversteer.
Even with the ESC switched on, you can feel the electronic limited-slip diff. In ESP Sport, it's a lot more lenient, responding to a gentle roll of the wrists. The weight of the engine makes you feel like you're doing it with your braking or ambitious camber, stiffer bushings and a model-specific rear-axle carrier combines to give the C63 a sweetly textural, benign feel at the limits of grip, belying its somewhat one-dimensional image.
Rolling from throttle to brake reveals a slight clunky pedal positioning, Mercedes – like many manufacturers – retaining a higher brake pedal than accelerator; a heel-and-toe requirements. Out of the corner, the Mercedes feels the strongest, with a comical slug of torque at 3000rpm and persisting with no let up at 5000rpm. The AMG-Speedshift 7 lets you get a gear if the required button is over, but despite its surfeit of cubic centimeters, the AMG engine operates best in that 2000rpm band and the gearbox software has a better feel for this. The following are some of the most important differences in the history of the world.
The M4's four-piston front brakes are the weakest aspect of its dynamic palette. It's a perennial M-car complaint goal BMW does not seem to be listening, deeming them sufficient for fast road driving. That's also open to question, the pedal goes long after a few committed applications on a downhill stretch. The M4 also suffers from oversteer. Perhaps that needs qualification. Unexpected oversteer is a phenomenon that is more likely to be caused by the Active Sound symposer.
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Between 2500 and 3000rpm, the sound is in the muted, deep rumble. It does not sound particularly potent, yet at this point in the range, the engine's making its full slug of 550Nm; more than enough to light up the rears. BMW claims the symposer makes up 2-3 percent of the sound with the rest natural, but the careful wording of its claims is disingenuous. Listen to a car with the symposia disabled and it's markedly different.
This is what they are spooked so much, the weird disconnect between what's happening to their ears and what the contact is. In short, oversteer arrives before you expect it and it's spikier than the AMG, the BMW's Michelin Pilot Super Sport rubber being less forgiving than the more malleable ContiSportContact 5P boots on the Benz, which exhibit a more manageably ramped transition from grip to slip. The M4 also has the loosest body control of the trio and requires a little more consideration when flicking from corner to corner.
Get into the RS5 after you've been wearing noise-canceling headphones. The Porsche-developed V6 (you'll find similar ironmongery under the cap of the Panamera 4S) sounds a little too mannered, even when given a merciless prodding. I found myself clicking my jaw because I thought the altitude had fallen on my ears. No, it's just a lot quieter. Quieter and quicker. The numbers against the stopwatch tell a compelling story and there's little doubt that one has gnarly cross-country road, the other two would not see where the RS5 had gone. It gives so much and asks for so much in return, which is both its greatest talent and most significant shortcoming.
The steering, even in Dynamic mode, is a bottle of Pure Blonde to the AMG and M4's steins of Warsteiner. The front end of the RS5 is predictably mighty, with a huge grip of the widest tyres of the trio, 275 / 30ZR20 ContiSportContact 6s. Try to get the car to misbehave and it all gets a bit reluctant, the 40:60 rear bias seems to promise a level of throttle adjustability that the Audi is not keen on indulging. It's undeniably effective at demolishing a string of corners, the new five-link rear end replacing the trapezoidal-link arrangement that underpinned the old car. It should be noted that Aussie cars feature the quattro rear sport differential – an option on Euro models – which delivers a greater percentage of fun to the rear wheel.
The V6 is freakish in its sheer relentlessness, with instant go from 2500rpm right through to the redline. There's next to no let-up. The only automatic gearbox of the trio makes a solid partner, slurring up and down ratios almost imperceptibly, holding gears to the limit if you prod the rising to the left and being way slicker in its operation than the stalk-mounted Benz shifter or the maddeningly over-complex BMW contrivance. Audi scores a minus point for getting the shift action the wrong way round though. And on an RS model too. Tut.
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The RS5 delivers the most refined cabin of the trio at cruising speeds, loose loose chip surfaces set up some extravagant tire rumble. The Mercedes is all exhausted, but with the exception of noise, the BMW is largely civilized below 4000rpm, which makes it all a bit exciting. While the Audi boosts its GT credentials with impressive driveline civility, it scores a surprising surprising ergonomic demerits.
The cabin is undeniably gorgeous, with hexagonal-stitched leather seats, beautifully judged materials quality and that showstopper wall-to-wall TFT virtual cockpit. Spend has little time with the RS5, however, and its compromises become apparent. The drive select button, a function you'll use frequently, is tiny and a long stretch away, evidence of lazy right-hand drive conversion. After fumbling for that, you then have a few seconds to grab the MMI controller before the screen reverting to its previous setting. What's more, the buttons are all but impossible to see in bright light, a line of angled silver toggle switches that reflect the sun.
The seating position is also too high for a cut, robbing headroom and exacerbating the shortcomings of the RS5's ride quality in Dynamic mode. The manual steering adjustment is a bit of a slick electric rake and reach settings. Access to the rear is better than the M4, although still in, it feels snug and far from claustrophobic. It also has the best array of storage options, and it is the only back seat of the three to get its own dedicated temperature control for the air-con.
The buttons on the front of the chair are considered to be one of the most important features of the body, which is one of the most important things in the world, which is always a temptation for evil offspring or drunken mates. Visibility out of the RS5 is not bad, with the slimmest A-pillars but the fattest B-pillars.
Styling? You will need to be more sophisticated, but the Audi attracted a lot of interest. That complex, hue-shifting optional paintwork was a factor, but the RS5 is a striking car. It's not so much the original A5 shape, Walter Silva's finest moment, but it's a confident and assured piece of vehicular sculpture. The AMG's glitzy shtick will, for many, justify its elevated price tag. Great seats and showy alloys aside, the M4 looks a little dull. This is the RS5's success, from a sales perspective at least.
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We do not count registrations as the fairest way of keeping score. We never have and never will, so it's time to crown a winner of these three cars. The M4 is undoubtedly the most flawed of the trio, yet it's an extended period of acclimatization. What's more, there's real dick and character to it. Yes, it's finishing this test third, but it's just one reckon you'd grow to love, and it's just one that's offered with three pedals. The Pure model does not exist yet, it does not exist as yet. The M4 CS (see sidebar, below) shows what can be done, it's bluntly, its price is a joke. Model by model, BMW continues to miss the M4, like a sniper repeatedly overcompensating the adjustment on a scope.
The RS5 is an interesting one. It excels on so many objectives that we were totting up scores, it was undoubtedly emerge with the biggest number. It's the newest, slickest, most economical, and quickest on a challenging road, but it never connects with the driver on any significant emotional plane. It's more 'good Audi' than bad, but it emerges as a bit of a curate's egg: it's a melange of overpolish in some areas and somewhat underdone in others. Its optimum ride / handling setting is, frustratingly, somewhere between the binary and the comfort and dynamic modes.
Which leaves the Mercedes-AMG as last man standing to the other two manage to count themselves out. Yes, the ride could be better and the shouty design will deter some of the goals, but it is not only that This impishness is infectious and encourages you to have a little fun. It's less than you expect, which is not enough, but it is not enough that AMG seems to understand better than the others. It's about an experience removed from the ordinary and the C63 S drenches you in just that from the first prod of the starter button. Notch another one up for Affalterbach.
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