Friyay: A weekend in the Audi S5

Friyay: A weekend in the Audi S5

It’s like they made a press car just for me!

My fancy (and fur) free colleagues tend to reserve weekends for the swoopier items in various media fleets — coupes, sport sedans and such. I, on the other hand, tend to ask for SUVs — vehicles that can deal with a bit of broken tarmac and more importantly, carry my furry friends along for the ride. It’s a two Golden Retriever rule (golden rule?) that throws up surprises, on occasion. “Sport” in SUV evidently means different things to different people. So my checklist for a weekend car flows thus: roomy, fun, not delicate. Then I said yes to the Audi S5, it arrived at the appointed time, and I went “oh, shit!”

I should explain. For whatever reason, in my mind, the S5 was a large, A6-class vehicle with a notchback — this would entail a cavernous boot and usually, flexible seating. I don’t know why I misunderstood, but what arrived was a rather small, swoopy, coupe-looking four-door with a large hatch. The seats were exquisite-looking, sporty leather thrones, the wheels large, shod with low-profile tyres and the engine numbers were in proper sportscar territory. About the only check box on the spec sheet that gave me some confidence for where I was about to go was the Quattro all-wheel drive system that Audi is famous for. Small solace that would be, if I were to beach myself on a sharp rock somewhere.

The idea was to take my dog, his friend and my partner on an afternoon swimming trip. The dogs would be swimming, we would be cooing and adoring, but I would mostly be shooting this swoopy, small four-door coupe. This isn’t my first time driving an S5. The last-gen model I drove from the Audi India fleet came in a lurid yellow colour, and apart from that, my memory is of being distinctly underwhelmed. It didn’t look or feel like the powerful vehicle it was. This new #BratPack S5 is very different indeed. It’s low to the ground, the proportions look just right, trim level is on point and it looked perfect in the “Navarra Blue Metallic” paint scheme. I’m a big fan of the Audi design language thus far. The A5/S5 series softens the sharp creases and lines a little bit. I didn’t think I’d like it as much as I did eventually.

But looking sexy in the driver’s seat was far down the list of problems. How would we get two full-grown furry dogs in the back? It took a bit of doing, but if you leave out the space-saver tyre and remove the two-piece parcel tray entirely, you free up a surprising amount of space in the boot. There’s enough, in fact, to make a little doggy 1BHK. The rear seats split and flip, so there’s extra flexibility, but we ended up keeping it up. Turns out, our dogs didn’t know what to do with all the space!

Our destination was a little beyond Lonavla — a short drive away from us outside Navi Mumbai, especially considering most of the way is on the Expressway. It gave me a chance to open up the S5’s 3l V6 a wee bit. But with 354hp and 500Nm on tap, I had to be extremely tentative. The S5 has reset my benchmark. Now I want 500Nm or more everywhere. 400 doesn’t cut it. I’m also pleased to use the torque-converter automatic in the S5. It’s responsive and quick, but even in sport mode, not brutal. Whereas the previous-gen S5 failed to leave an impression, this one feels like a proper GT. The quilted two-tone seats are sexy, the panoramic sunroof gives you a sense of space under the low roof and you don’t have to make weird compromises in the interest of “sporty” like in the R8 V10 Plus, where you have to drag your seat forward and back to adjust your driving position, like you would in a base variant hatchback. Everything that should be powered, is. Ride quality too, errs on the side of luxury without getting squishy.

As sexy and quick as the S5 is, nothing prepared me for what it could do when the road is paved in name only. Large potholes, rocks, gravel and wide chunks of missing bitumen were handled with surprising ease in the S5. In fact, about the only place that I scraped the underbody was a mild touch on a city speed (car?) breaker. We really should outlaw these horrible, wasteful, downright dangerous deterrents. Despite the low ground clearance and sporty suspension setup, just going slow and avoiding the most egregious obstacles was enough to get through and make it to a grassy clearing. Of course, the Quattro system ensured that there was never the slightest hint of wheelspin no matter the terrain, and on proper tarmac, it claws at the road like a beast possessed. But a classy beast. In a nice shirt, and fitted pants.

The S5 is available in India in just one trim, and it comes fully loaded. There’s the aforementioned pano sunroof, a B&O sound system which is — in fact — properly nice sounding, the virtual cockpit that pervades every premium Audi these days, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, cruise control and automatic parking that I’m just too old and Indian to use. There are other vehicles that’ll give you all this and more, but the S5 at Rs 72,41,000 managed to impress me enough to ask for another go when the comms folk deem me worthy. Sorry about the doggy hair guys, but it was totally worth it.