This (to us, anyway) is an awesome sleeper on the dyno. No an Audi S5 is not really a slow car. They make great power, they are all wheel drive, and they can move, BUT, this one is an exception. Take all of the great stuff that an S5 brings to the table and then hot rod it with boost and good tuning and all of a sudden you have this roaring car that makes 500hp to all four corners and can really melt some brains on the street or strip.
Audi fans are truly into their stuff. The brand is one that is interesting because of its racing and performance heritage but it still suffers from a stigma of being perhaps lacking in durability and not lacking at all in repair cost. When stuff breaks a lot and is expensive to fix people tend to moan about it. Who saw that coming? Anyway, that’s what the non-hardcore Audi lover says. I tend to really like driving them. They have a little more spunk than equivalent BMW models and their use of the V8 is also spot on. The S4 is a little small but the S5 is a bigger bitchin’ car. That’s what this sucker is.
Th 4.2L V8 in this car was rated for about 350hp from the factory several years ago and now it is making LOADS more than that and doing it on the rollers of a Mustang dyno which means that the horsepower numbers are not some la la land happy weirdness. The transmission seems less than super enthusiastic about shifting on time during this pull but that could likely be cleaned up with tuning or when it explodes and is replaced with a new unit. You know, either one.
We dig the scream of the engine and the whistle of the turbo. This thing could clean up on the boulevard grand prix tour.
