Category: Compact Executive 
Price Range: £24,660 to £39,825
Quality and solidity, sumptuous cabin, big boot, gutsy 3.0 TDI engine, effective Multitronic transmission.
Feels nose heavy despite new chassis design, unresolved styling, poor rear-seat room.
Lacks a clear personality. Competent in many ways but could have been so much better. The 3.0 TDI Quattro is the best version.
This feels a big, bulky car. The pillars are thick, especially the centre pillar which, judging by the meeting of the flush front and rear side windows, the design team would rather wasn't there. The waistline is high, and you feel hemmed in if you set the seat for an appropriately sporting driving position. Those huge mirrors are great for seeing behind but not so good for the forward-three-quarter view they obscure. Instruments and switches are clear and easy to use.
So, what about this new chassis, now less nose-heavy and sharper-steering? The improvement is not immediately obvious. The steering is indeed more accurate and less springy than that of past mid-size Audis, but it still feels aloof from the road. And the nose still wants to run wide if you enter a bend enthusiastically, with no help from the tail if you ease the accelerator. It would be good if this action brought the tail around a bit, but the A5 is disappointingly inert here.
The front-drive 3.2 Multitronic feels the most immediately agile because it's lighter, just as a front-drive Audi TT 2.0 is more nimble than a 3.2 Quattro. The A5 3.0 TDI Quattro feels a touch heavier but once in a corner its four-wheel drive (with nominally 60% of torque going to the back wheels) makes it ultimately better able to stay on course so you can exit a bend more cleanly. As for the S5, pinnacle of the range, it really does feel big and heavy although it has plenty of grip on its big 18" wheels. There's no joy in hustling it through bends; ultimately the 3.0 TDI Quattro is best for that, helped by the engine's fabulous torque.
Why the dull dynamics? And why waste all that effort in developing the new platform? Audi's chief chassis engineer agrees with our assessment and would like things to be different, but Audi's marketing department insisted that the A5 must feel familiar to existing Audi owners. Which suggests that a) those owners would be unable to appreciate an improvement, which is an odd stance to take, and b) that Audi isn't interested in attracting buyers from BMW. The marketeers have shot themselves in the foot, then.
One good point, though. The brakes are nicely progressive as well as having a good, powerful bite. The snatchy, over-servoed brakes of past Audis are history, thank goodness.
Most impressive of the cars we tried was the 3.0 TDI. Like the S5 and 3.2 FSI it will reach 155mph, and it storms to 62mph in 5.9 seconds (3.2 FSI Multitronic 6.6, manual 6.1). Its diesel engine's deep, mechanical note sounds more like a potent petrol-fuelled six-cylinder of the 1950s, and it's rather pleasing. Even more pleasing is its low-speed pull, a torrent of energy perfect for overtaking and powering out of corners. There's usable power up to 5,000rpm, too - high revs for a big diesel.
The 3.2 FSI V6 is also pretty torquey in its latest guise, and has a racy blare when revved. Our test car was fitted with the Multitronic transmission, which Audi has now programmed with eight ratio steps so it sounds and feels more like a normal gearbox. There's none of the disconnected-sounding rise and fall of revs you normally get with a CVT; instead it behaves much like the DSG double-clutch gearbox found in transverse-engined Audis/VWs/Skodas.
You might think all those ratios confuse the issue, as they do in an eight-speed Lexus, but because there's none of the slurring of the drivetrain you get with a torque-converter auto (like the Lexus's) it's easier to sense what's going on. The automatic mode works superbly, and you can override it whenever you want using either the paddleshifters on the steering wheel or the Tiptronic-type selector lever. The ratios are so close that you're reminded of a racing gearbox, and it's a lot of fun. Yet eighth 'gear' is very long-legged, giving around 40mph per 1,000rpm. Audi is surely the only carmaker to offer three types of auto in its model range.
And the S5? All that power should make for a very rapid car, and its claimed 0-62mph time of 5.1 seconds confirms the point. But you need to work the engine hard to wake it up, which adds to the sense that this is a heavy, rather unwieldy car. It does sound good, though, a mechanical-sounding whine overlaid on a deep bass V8 woofle which becomes a staccato spatter as the pace rises. The six-speed manual keeps you in touch with the power delivery in a way the auto might not, but its shift can be a bit clunky.
The electric parking brake works well. It has two controls: a manual one which you must remember to apply although it can release automatically as you drive off, and an auto button which applies the brake whenever you stop - useful in uphill stop-start traffic, and it means the driver behind needn't be dazzled by a foot left lazily on the A5's brake pedal.
