New Audi RS 5 Avant: A Big, Powerful Wagon That Handles Even Better

Audi has always been firmly planted in a very special place in the automotive enthusiast and collector world because of how it has combined the look and practicality of a wagon platform with seriously good handling and increasingly powerful motors. It is great to see that it is still doing that with the newly announced Audi RS 5 Avant.

While the sport wagon world may have started as something meant to be practical, in many ways that is no longer the case. These wagons now hit a very particular niche and in many markets, the wagon platform outsells the more standard sedan platform, even if otherwise they have the upgraded engines and power plants. And it isn’t about practicality. It’s about look. And soul.

The new RS 5 Avant uses a 2.9 liter V6 twin turbo and combines it with a plug-in electric motor. And Audi being Audi, it’s putting in new technologies: the rear transaxle features the world’s first regular-production use of electromechanical torque vectoring, which basically means the car is hugely more “pointable” and grippy when you want it to turn. It’s called Quattro with Dynamic Torque Control.

What is happening with this electromechanical torque vectoring system is that reacts more quickly and precisely, and more intelligent in how it does so. It can shift the torque around in milliseconds and it can create these differences of torque in the rear wheels, regardless of how the power is applied.

For the let’s-have-some-fun driving side, what it means is you can come into a corner and step on the accelerator hard and the car will have all four wheels scrambling to push you out of that corner fast—but in a way that allows you to deliver as much power as possible, as opposed to just wasting it. Unlike mechanical systems, this one is actually working whenever the car is operating, including deceleration or braking as well, so you will be able to change your attitude as you go around that corner even more precisely than before.

This new technology, of course, needs a huge amount of control. The heart of this system is the high-performance computing platform or the HCP1. This central control unit works on the drivetrain and suspension and compares what it knows about what the vehicle is doing with what it thinks the driver is doing in terms of steering, braking, accelerating, and the like.

What will be interesting to see is how this works when you go into a curve and try to do a rapid movement that would normally unbalance a car. Sometimes—ok, a lot of the time—this unbalance is induced on purpose because you want to set the car up for the exit and slide around a bit. Audi says that their system will be taking all of this into account, anticipating what is needed so it is ready, much more quickly.

While Audi is very, very known for balance, driving, and handling, it has often been the sport wagons that had the benefit of the huge engines because they were sometimes looked at as more straight line machines than curve cutters. This is the company that put a 5.2 Liter, normally aspirated V10 based on the engine architecture of Lamborghini’s Gallardo in an S6 Avant and created the world’s most powerful station wagon. It also once used a 4.8 liter V8 built for them in Northampton rather than Munich, because Cosworth made it for them: screaming speed and a wonderfully throaty roar that would tend to surprise the supercarSupercarA high-performance sports car with exceptional speed, advanced engineering, and striking design, produced in low volumes by marques such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, and McLaren. Supercars sit near the top ofGo to Supercar Glossary boys who didn’t know their stuff. They do like their wagons fast.

With this new quattro dynamic handling system in place comes what could really be considered next-level handling and dynamic precision along with all the power and torque coming from the twin-turbo V6 plug-in hybrid. At the same time, it also makes this type of fun more accessible to different types of drivers.

In the same year that they enter Formula 1 with a regulated powerplant design that is starting to be a bit controversial across all teams (while still making points in their first-EVER F1 race) Audi put something on the road to remind everyone how much it really knows about trying new things.