Words and Photos: Deven Solanki
Every time a legendary badge goes plug-in, the internet reaches for its pitchforks, and the RS5 is the latest to cop it. So when Audi offered us the keys at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park, I was curious to see what the fuss was about. The Avant and Sedan were both there, but the wagon was mine for the day.
Drag racing, slalom weaves, and open laps of the National and Club circuits were on the menu, which is exactly what you want when a car has this much to prove. Blipping the throttle on a motorway on-ramp tells you bugger all about 470kW. A closed circuit with no speed limit is the only fair trial. Let’s start with the bit everyone’s arguing about: what’s actually under the bonnet.
UNDER THE BONNET
First, relax: the V6 is still here, and it’s stronger than before. It’s the familiar 2.9-litre twin-turbo, now good for 375kW and 600Nm on its own, a 44kW jump over the old car’s engine before the electric motor even gets involved. Paired with a 130kW electric motor that adds its shove the instant you touch the throttle, combined system output is 470kW and 825Nm, which is a lot to ask of a car that also promises more than 80km of silent, zero-emission commuting. Plug it in overnight, forget about it, and you can do the daily duties without burning a drop of petrol.
Gearshifts are handled by a heavy-duty ZF eight-speed automatic rather than a dual-clutch. Dual-clutch purists might whine, but a proper torque converter makes complete sense here, the electric motor is housed right inside the transmission, making it tough enough to absorb the simultaneous punch of twin turbos and instant electric grunt.
Add Audi’s signature quattro all-wheel drive and the new electromechanical rear axle, and things get properly interesting. Audi says that in RS Torque Rear mode up to 85 per cent of the torque can head to the back, with the outside rear tyre spun faster than the inside one to help rotate the car. In plain English, it’s built to go sideways on demand, which is wicked and a little bit irresponsible.
THE EXTERIOR
Park it up in the pits and the width is the first thing you notice. Audi has stretched the body about 90mm wider than the A5, and the swollen arches are a nod to the blistered guards of the original Quattro.
Up front, the RS5 looks a lot more aggressive, with a big gloss-black grille in an RS honeycomb pattern, flanked by huge intakes that feed the radiators and cool the brakes. The darkened Matrix LED headlights carry a chequered-flag daytime running light signature, and you can cycle through up to eight DRL patterns, which is the RS3’s party trick with a few more options.
Every RS5 Avant sold here rides on 21-inch matt platinum grey wheels wrapped in 285/30 rubber, with RS steel brakes and black callipers behind them. If you want carbon-ceramic brakes, they’ll set you back an extra $22,000.
Around the back, the digital OLED tail lights repeat the chequered-flag look, and the RS roof-edge spoiler sits above the tailgate. The RS sport exhaust ends in oversized oval tips that poke through the diffuser, and the only clue that this is a plug-in is the charge port on the rear guard.
INSIDE THE COCKPIT
Audi has nailed the balance between luxury and track ergonomics. The heavily bolstered RS sport seats, finished in perforated leather with classic honeycomb stitching, lock you firmly in place without sacrificing comfort while taking those hard corners.
You sit nice and low behind a chunky flat-bottomed wheel that feels great in the hands. The best bit is the red RS mode and Boost buttons on the spokes. They fall right under your thumbs, so you can go from cruising to full send without taking your eyes off the road.
Across the dash, Audi’s new panoramic digital display feeds you real-time g-forces, tyre temps, and boost levels. The touchscreen runs Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Audi Drive Select, but just like in the RS3, I spent most of my time parked on the built-in RS Monitor page: checking live tyre temps and pressures between hot laps is oddly satisfying.
One of the more impressive features is the built-in track monitor. Instead of messing around with phone apps or external timers, you can drop a GPS pin at the start line, set your end marker, and the dash tracks your lap and split times in real time.
Audi’s also cleaned up the centre console by replacing the old gear selector with a flush toggle switch, freeing up heaps of room for usable cupholders and a wireless charger. It gives the whole cabin a modern feel that bridges the gap between daily commuter and track weapon. All of that is well and good sitting still in the pits, though. Time to see what it’s actually like behind the wheel.
ON TRACK
First up was the drag strip. We lined up at the tree on the Club Circuit main straight, and tapping the RS button on the wheel brings up RS Individual mode, which lets you tailor the steering, suspension, and power delivery. Given the price tags on these things, traction control stayed on, but it didn’t dull the launch one bit. I was paired against another Avant, and we traded wins run after run. Brake, build the boost, then dump the pedal, and the RS5 fires off the line with brutal force. The V6 sounds rich and revs cleanly, but it’s the electric motor you notice first, covering for the turbos before they’ve spooled up. The eight-speed auto slips smoothly through every gear, so nothing interrupts the linear surge. The 0–100kph sprint is done in 3.6 seconds, and it’s every bit as ridiculous as it sounds for a big wagon.
Next up was the slalom, where the team set up a series of cones designed to test directional changes under pressure. We launched off the starting line to weave through the course, using the built-in track monitor to shave fractions off with each successive run. On paper, tossing a heavy wagon through a tight cone weave sounds like a recipe for excessive body roll, but the active RS suspension is surprisingly well controlled, absorbing track imperfections with ease. With rubber debris scattered across the tarmac from an earlier drift session, the tail naturally kicked out as we threw the car into the transitions, and the rear-axle torque vectoring caught it before I had to do much myself. Get too enthusiastic, though, and the seatbelt pretensioners have other ideas — mine cinched up hard enough on one run to remind me who was really in charge.
For the final session, we took the Avant onto the Club Circuit and the full National Circuit to see what it would do at speed. With the tyres loaded up hard through Hampton’s long sweepers, the suspension stayed rock solid and composed, even in the long-roof Avant. At around 2370kg, the RS5 has no business steering this quickly, but the response is rapid and direct, and it hides the hybrid mass pretty damn well.
Once you’re straight, the Boost button hands you 10 seconds of everything the car has, whatever drive mode you’re in. All 470kW goes to the tarmac, and the electric motor slingshots you out of the slow corners before the turbos have finished spooling. Once they do, you’re pinned into the seats, before it’s onto the brakes hard into the next corner and doing it all over again. By the end of the day my arms were tired and my face hurt from grinning, but that’s usually a good sign!
THE VERDICT
Purists might still moan on the internet about Audi taking its premier RS badge down the plug-in path, but on circuit, the results speak for themselves. If anything, the electric side makes the V6 better, covering the low-rev gap.
I turned up half expecting to find something to complain about, and left without one. It’s a comfortable, high-tech daily with an EV mode for the school run, and in RS Individual, RS Sport, or RS Torque Rear it turns into a 470kW, 825Nm track weapon that’ll happily kick its tail out when asked. It’s not Audi Sport’s first electrified RS — the RS e-tron GT got there first — but it’s the first time the badge has gone hybrid, and the V6 hasn’t lost any of its character for it.
Hampton Downs is only half the story, though. The real test is how the RS5 copes with bumpy rural backroads and the daily run to the supermarket, and I’ll be spending a week with one to find out. If it’s as good on our patched-up backroads as it is on the circuit, the purists are in trouble.
Check out Audi’s site for full specs and details: https://www.audi.co.nz/en/models/a5/rs-5-avant/
