Audi RS4 Avant Review

You’ll read everywhere that the RS4 is the perfect all-round car for a family in a hurry, but you don’t actually have to have any children for it to make perfect sense. Indeed, if you’ve a busy life and want to keep the miles off your super or sports car, then an RS4 is quite possibly the perfect choice. Fast and incredibly surefooted, it’s an all-weather weapon that’ll carry everything you could possibly want it to, without having to hire a van with an afterburner. 

It might have slightly overt looks, but it’s still a fairly stealthy way of having a mega performance car, without necessarily shouting about it. People will look and think ‘sensible estate’ leaving only the well-informed knowing its real potential. Take the badges off it, order it in a sober colour and go with the standard 19-inch wheels and you’ll increase that effect even further. If you’re even reading this, then the RS4 is almost certainly a car you should consider. 

Audi has pretty much had this marketplace to itself for a long time, but that’s not to say there aren’t rivals, there just aren’t that many of them. The most obvious is the Mercedes-AMG C63/C63S Estate, which is powered by a turbocharged V8 engine, with even more power than the RS4. It’s a lot more of a handful to drive, thanks to rear-wheel drive only. 

The only other direct competitor is the Alpina B3 Touring, the small firm’s BMW-based machines are coveted by car enthusiasts, the B3 being based on the BMW 3 Series. Like the RS4, the B3 Touring is powered by a turbo charged six-cylinder (straight, not V6) engine, and features four-wheel drive. There’s not a great deal of choice then, but what choices there are, are all rather appealing.  

Audi excels at interiors, relating to not just the visuals, tactility and design, but the entire operation and functionality of all the controls. The RS4 is no exception, indeed, its flagship status means it gets the very finest materials, from soft leather throughout, beautiful stitching and all the best equipment, with things like the 10.1-inch centre screen getting distinct RS upgrades and graphics, likewise, the Virtual Cockpit having its own bespoke RS4 visuals and functions. 

Everything, from the chunky feel of the steering wheel, to something as mundane and out of sight as the inside of the glovebox, it all feels like it’s worth the money you’ve paid for it, even at the RS4’s loftiest price point above £80,000. 

That’s evident throughout, Audi’s reputation for making the very finest interiors meaning there's nothing that you look at and think 'why they didn’t spend a bit more?', though there is one proviso, and it’s discussed below. 

Given Audi’s impeccable reputation for interiors the one stand out thing that lets the side down is the positioning of the 10.1 inch infotainment screen. It does look a bit add-on rather than fully integrated, that feeling not helped as it’s a touchscreen, its position such that it’s not unusual to find yourself steadying your hand on the top of it, while prodding it with your thumb. Do that, and the screen moves ever so slightly. It’s a thing because the rest of the cabin is so well done, we’d probably not even notice it on a rival. 

The infotainment itself is, largely, easy enough to operate, with sensibly configured menus, with most necessary functions easily accessed – and echoed by wheel controls and the RS4’s Virtual Cockpit instruments ahead of the driver. 

Of course, there’s Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connection here, Bluetooth connectivity and DAB. It’s worth adding the Comfort and Sound Pack for the benefit of the Bang & Olufsen stereo. Controlling all that is via the touchscreen, or an MMI touchpad, Audi, inexplicably replacing its brilliant MMI rotary knob and supplementary switches with a laptop-style touchpad in the centre console. It’ll take some practice to work comfortably with it, and, frankly, it’ll never prove as easy to operate as the previous solution, it a rare backwards step from Audi. 

Mercifully, Audi’s resisted the temptation to integrate the heating and ventilation controls into the infotainment, it operated by simple dials and switches below the main screen.   

There’s plenty of space up front, while there are good-sized door bins, a usefully sized glovebox and a deep central bin between the driver and passenger under an armrest. A pair of cupholders sit in the transmission tunnel, too, and there’s a tiny little tray alongside the gearstick that we’ve no idea what what the use of is. A lipstick or something, perhaps? 

The rear seats are a good size for children, though adults, and particularly if you’re taller, might find them a squeeze for head and knee room. Really, the RS4 a comfortable four-seater, then, and with the capacity to add a fifth passenger occasionally, the middle rear seat raised, offering little in the way of support and thanks to the location of the transmission tunnel, there’s very little foot room for a fifth passenger. 

The outer rear seats have Isofix child seat mounts, as does the front passenger seat, and Audi will sell you child seats to fit the RS4 perfectly. 

Enough about the seats, this is an estate car, so you want the volumes, don’t you? Well, there’s 495 litres of space in the boot with the seats all in position, dropping them allowing the RS4 to swallow 1510 litres, that, coincidentally, the exact same volume as the RS4’s AMG C63 rival. Fold those rear seats and the floor isn’t entirely flat, but it’s long and useful, regardless. To carry more, at this pace and price, you’ll need to look at performance SUVs. 

That boot is easily accessed, while dropping those seats is a cinch, too, it just a lever pull near the tailgate and they’ll drop. They do so in 40/20/40 format, allowing you to throw in longer items, while retaining some additional seats. 

One of the few options available, but useful is the Storage Pack, which adds storage nets on the back of the front seats, a lock to the glovebox and a cupholder in the rear armrest. It also adds tensioning straps, a 12V socket and a luggage net in the boot, all for just £195.  

Only one engine and gearbox is offered with the RS4, and it’s a 2.9-litre twin turbocharged V6. RS4 fans might have balked when they realised that the glorious 4.2-litre naturally aspirated V8 engine was a victim to ever-tougher emissions regulations, but the new engine does produce the same 450PS as that old V8, and is more flexible, and, crucially, a whole lot clearer and economical. 

It also nods to the RS2’s link with Porsche, the same turbocharged V6 used in the company’s Panamera range. In the RS2 that power, mixed with its sizeable 600Nm of torque, allows a 0-62mph time of 4.1 seconds and a 155mph top speed, or 174mph if you pay Audi a bit more. The twin turbochargers mean that peak torque figure is available throughout almost the entire range of the engine’s operation, making it feel faster more of the time than the peaky delivery of its predecessor. 

That engine drives through an eight-speed automatic transmission, which, like all performance cars with automatics, offers finger-flipping control via paddle shifters. How nobody at Audi has not yet realised its paddle shifters are far too small, and lack the sort of satisfying action in operation of many rivals is an absolute mystery, especially as Audi is masterful in the pleasing operation of virtually every other switch and dial in the RS4’s interior. 

The gearbox is quick, not as lightning quick as you’ll get in some of the sports and supercars the RS4’s performance apes, but quick enough to be enjoyable.  

Audi managed to ditch quite a lot of weight in creating this RS4, and some of it was sound deadening. That’s not necessarily a complaint, this is, after all, not a car you’ll buy without knowing what you’re getting. That is a powertrain you’ll want to hear, indeed, we’ve recommended a couple of times here that you’ll want to option the RS Sports Exhaust to do exactly that. 

Do so and the engine is more vocal, pleasingly so, it crackling and growling, shrieking and popping, which is part of the reason you buy cars like this. 

There’s always something of a flip-side, and it's that the tyres needed to put all that power to the road to transmit a bit of road noise to the interior, aided by the tauter suspension that they’re hanging off. It’ll all quieten down on a long cruise, the V6 working not very hard in eighth gear, but, if refinement and hushed quiet when you’re driving is your estate car vibe, then Audi will be only too happy to direct you to one of their more mundane, less focussed A4 Avants, instead. 

A full five star EuroNCAP crash test score when it was tested, in its humdrum A4 guise which shares the same structure and safety equipment, underlines the RS4 should protect you if you crash it. That the RS4 has bigger, better brakes, is more stable thanks to wider track widths, has more actual rubber on the road should help you avoid an accident in the first place. As should the traction, stability control and the anti-lock brakes. 

Standard safety equipment includes Pre-Sense City, 360 birds view parking camera, Parking Assist, Hold Assist, a rear view camera, Audi Side Assist and enough airbags inside that it’d surely float if you inflated them all. 

Add the Driver Assistance Pack and you get even more active driver aids, including Adaptive Cruise Control with Stop&Go, Traffic Jam Assist, Pre-Sense front, Camera Based Traffic Sign Recognition and Active Lane Assist. Audi also offers a pair of cameras front and rear to record any accidents, while standard tyre pressure monitoring also help keep you safe. 

The RS4 will have a broad customer base, covering people who have it as their only car, to those buyers who’ll have it as a fast daily driver that gets parked up in a garage alongside a bunch of super and sports cars. What you pay for your insurance will vary wildly depending on your circumstances, driving record and where you park it, but it’s listed in group 42.  

Being over £40,000 means for the first five years of ownership you’ll pay £310 over the standard VED tax rate. After that it’ll revert to the standard rate.

The RS4 might sit at the top of the A4 Avant range, but more realistically its better thought of as a model in its own right, as an Audi RS car. 

Three different options are, usually, offered to buyers, with occasional special editions mixing that up a bit. 

The standard RS4 Avant comes with a huge standard specification, indeed, all it really lacks is Audi’s Comfort and Sound Package for about £1,400 which brings advanced options on the keyless go system, a 360 degree parking camera, LED interior lighting and a Bang & Olufsen 3D sound system. If you want your RS4 to sound as good outside as it does inside with that package then the RS Sport Exhaust is an absolute must, indeed, we’d be amazed if any are sold without it optioned. 

The Carbon Black model adds a lot of carbon, and black, for about £7000. Vorsprung chucks absolutely everything at the RS4 for those too time poor, but cash rich to buy it, as they’ll need to be with a price over £82,000.