A fast wagon for the gamer generation

Tuesday, 2 October 2018

The Audi RS4 is subtly aggressive. Except for those wheels - there is nothing subtle about them.

AUDI RS 4 AVANT

It's down two cylinders on the old one, but the RS4's V6 is a seriously good piece of kit.

Base price: $149,900

Powertrain and performance: 2.9-litre turbo petrol V6 with 331kW/600Nm, eight-speed automatic transmission, AWD, Combined economy 8.8 litres per 100km, 0-100km/h 4.1 seconds.

Vital statistics: 4781mm long, 1404mm high, 2720mm wheelbase, luggage capacity 505 litres, 20-inch alloy wheels, 275/30 tyres.

We like: Utterly savage performance, superb engine, razor sharp responses, surprisingly luxurious as well.

The RS4 looks utterly amazing, sounds belligerently sensational and is ridiculously quick. But it doesn't want to be your friend.

We don't like: Doesn't engage or even particularly involve the driver.

It's the latest in the legendary RS 4 line, so it's automatically awesome, right?

Uh, yeah. Sort of.

High tech and luxurious, the RS4's interior is a fantastic place to be.

The RS 4 is a mind-bendingly fast car. It makes a wonderfully belligerent noise, it is insanely sharp and responsive, it is utterly beautifully made and combines impressive luxury with feral pace and performance.

**READ MORE

* The idiot's guide to Audi Sport

* The five coolest Audi RS model ever made

Serious pace and useful practicality. That is why we love fast wagons. Plus, they look cool too.

* Audi RS 5: can an extra letter really be worth $30,000?**

But driving the RS 4 quickly is like playing an amazingly realistic video game - it looks right, makes all the right noises and has all the right responses, but it still doesn't quite feel real. Or involving.

It feels like if you stuff things up rather badly in the RS 4 all that will happen is you will bump harmlessly off the wall and carry on at a reduced pace. Which, as we all know, doesn't happen in the real world…

But that is completely on purpose. In the car world these days, if you want steering feel and involved and informative feedback from the steering and chassis, then you are old school. A relic from the past.

The generation raised on PlayStation racing games want cars that drive like that. Steering that tells you what the road is doing is merely an annoyance to them. A chassis that gently feeds information through to your bum-o-meter is unnecessary - they want unerring accuracy, digital precision and relentless ease.

And the Audi RS 4 is all of those things in one stunningly attractive, beautifully appointed, ferociously quick and cooly rationally package.

But isn't unerring accuracy, digital precision and relentless ease a good thing in a car?

Indeed it is. But a bit of emotional character and making you feel both like a hero and a villain behind the wheel are an enjoyable part of such cars too.

People who buy fast Audis do seem to particularly like that sort of thing - and more power to them - but personally, I always prefer a bit of character and some sort of involvement in my antisocially fast cars.

That is why something like a Mercedes-AMG C 63 would curl my toes more. The current generation M3 isn't quite as electrifying as it once was, but it still holds more feral appeal to me personally.

But the areas that the Audi crushes both of those cars is in pure luxury and ease of everyday living, with the RS 4 being both more luxuriously comfortable and capable of being more docile than either of its fellow Germans (even though they are both impressively capable of it too).

Any other cars I should consider?

Well, the aforementioned BMW and Mercedes-AMG models are the RS 4's natural competitors, but the $162,550 M3 is only available as a sedan, while the $170,290 C 63 S AMG is considerably more expensive, leaving the RS 4 essentially in a class of its own in offering searing performance in a wagon shape for $150K.

Alternatively, you could drop $57,990 on the seriously fun and involving Skoda Octavia RS245 wagon and spend the remaining $92K on a seriously good PC racing set up and get a very similar experience to driving the RS4.