Motoring: A civilised beast

07/05/2008 

THE morning after I took delivery of the Audi S5, two people came to inspect it. One was a moron who put a deep, 18-inch, wavy scratch above the near-side headlight.

The second was a 50-something bloke with glasses who approached me while I was sitting in the car reading the manual, to tell me about the scratch. He then tried to ask me about torques and gear ratios while I hopped around swearing.

Anyway, once I’d calmed down a bit I decided to see how the car drove. It quickly became apparent that this was a very smooth, solid and luxurious car. The leather seats were supremely comfortable and could be adjusted everywhere, the climate control worked perfectly and unobtrusively and the satnav/radio/CD system was very competent. It even boasted speakers by high-end hi-fi people Bang & Olufsen.

BROODING

The 4.2-litre engine created a brooding, rumbling sound at low speeds but even when I accelerated hard it never really roused itself. It didn’t open its lungs and bellow, which, considering its size and power, I kind of expected it to.

I couldn’t help but think that Audi had given it a massive engine and then decided to keep it quiet and not make a fuss. It had a very smooth ride that soaked up the bumps on London’s roads yet it still managed to corner like it was on rails.

AWESOME

Audi’s Quattro four-wheel-drive system divides power 40 per cent to the front, 60 per cent to the rear, and still seems as good and grippy as when it was launched in the 1980s.

Combined with the quality of the suspension, the Quattro system keeps all four wheels on the road, giving the driver the feeling that you are never going to run out of grip, despite the car’s awesome power output of 349bhp. That power shifts this very big, solid and actually quite heavy car from 0-62mph in 5.1 seconds — no mean feat — and on to 155mph.

Outside, the car is a very good-looking coupe shape. To an extent, most cars have an anthropomorphic quality and this is no different — the headlights do look like eyes. There’s a probably a media studies PhD on this very subject.

ANIMAL

Having said that, the shape of the S5 is not so much human as animal — and specifically a large member of the cat family. The front wings look like the muscularly bulbous shoulders of a panther. The animal-like theme is taken up by the line of driving lights which are always on under the headlights or, if you like, the bottom eyelash.

They do announce the S5’s arrival and give it a stylish presence, even if they do slightly resemble those cheesy rope lights beloved of 50-year-old fat blokes who run mobile discos and play “disco nights” or golden weddings at working men’s clubs.

So, quickly putting that image aside, the Audi remains a very good-looking, smooth, large and extremely fast car that I could happily live with and drive every day.

POWERFUL

However‚ and this might seem overly critical, this car is so well engineered to maximise comfort and has such a powerful engine that you don’t always realise how fast you are travelling. And that’s what got me the second unwelcome visitor of the day I had possession of this car.

He announced himself with flashing blue lights in the rear-view mirror on the M1. He gave me three points on my licence and a £60 fine. And extracted a promise to look a lot more closely at the speedometer in future. Still, at least he didn’t key the thing.

By Andy Puttnam