Audi RS4: This Audi will upstage Aston

The Audi RS4 is already called "the best car that the company has ever produced". Read the evidence here. Especially the comparison with Aston Martin is very interesting, although you don't need to be named Bond to drive an Audi RS4...

Can an Aston Martin and an Audi occupy the same sentence? It looks like they just have, just as they occupy adjacent slots in an alphabetical list of car prices. But there is more reason than mere etymological coincidence. Take the newest examples of both brands.

Last year we covered Aston Martin's new Vantage V8 in these pages, thrilling to its engine note, loving its combination of searing high-revs power and easy low-revs cruisability. And that magnificent engine bears a remarkable resemblance to that of Audi's new RS4, the fastest road-going Audi ever - and yours for £49,980.

The Audi's engine is a little quieter most of the time (although it, too, has the Jekyll and Hyde personality split brought about by an exhaust bypass valve), but the character, the crispness, the fabulous excess of energy, all are shared.

The RS4's figures are astounding. Eight naturally aspirated cylinders, 4.2 litres, 420bhp pouring out to the wheels. (Thus is the Aston upstaged: it achieves "just" 380bhp from its 4.3 litres.) That Audi power is fed to all four wheels, because this is a quattro-drive. Then there's the speed, electronically limited to 155mph but potentially rather more, and the ability to pass 60mph after 4.7 seconds.

And then there's the engine's ability to scream to stratospheric heights as it performs these feats, levelling off only when the rev-counter reads 8,250rpm. That's Aston-like, too, except that the British car isn't quite so rev-happy (only 7,500rpm, poor thing). No Audi has performed feats like these before.

It also rides very well, better than any other Audi A4 in the model hierarchy, whether on standard 18in wheels or optional 19in ones. A few laps of Pirelli's test track at Vizzola, near Milan, confirmed how agile, how controllable and how hugely adhesive this car is. It is, in fact, the best Audi ever.

Related news: GermanCarBlog, Audi RS4

Source: The Independent

Audi RS4: This Audi will upstage Aston

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