Audi S5 Sportback.
For better or worse, auto dealerships employ social-media teams these days, the idea being to tout their products and communicate with customers, the risk being the unrestricted anonymous whiplash online. And so it happened that an Audi dealer in Peoria, Ill. posted this message on Facebook: “Robert and Julia traded in his dream car, a 1966 Mustang GT, for a new 2018 Audi S5 Sportback.
Whoa. How could you not know what was coming?
The mocking fallout held no bounds. As Drive.com reported, the posters piled on Robert for trading a classic American-built pony car for a German-built performance hatchback. “Yo,” wrote one, “I’m pretty sure Robert should have traded in Julia, not his dream car.”
So, hereby is an explanation of Robert’s possible rationale – presuming that few if any of the online ranters have ever driven an S5 Sportback, and secondly that Robert (last name undisclosed) needed the equity from the Mustang to acquire the Audi.
Do you remember being instantly attracted to someone – maybe at a business conference, on a vacation or while backpacking across Europe? It’s so intense, you get to wondering how to work out the relationship long term. But she lives there, you live elsewhere, far, far away. Family, jobs, visas and all that. Ultimately, begrudgingly, you let go of the longing as impossibly fanciful and settle for the temporary delight of the here and now. You know implicitly it’s going to end right there and it does; she goes home, you go home. But that doesn’t stop the fantasizing about her for months afterward.
Her name was Debby, a British teacher working in Singapore, vacationing in Bali. We exchanged correspondence for a while, clinging to the fascination of that one week, trying in vain to make it last longer somehow.
Strangely, I’ve thought about that time ever since dropping off the S5 Sportback test car eight months ago. Because even now, for all the vehicles I have an opportunity to drive on a short-term basis, the S5 Sportback just felt right.
As with relationships, the choice of a vehicle is so completely individual. You like what you like.
The Sportback offers balance: fun-to-drive performance without being Ferrari-scary, hatchback storage, surprising fuel efficiency, great sound, top-grade technology and, ultimately, driver comfort.
Audi’s virtual cockpit is ergonomically exceptional, perhaps what an astronaut may desire. The design puts within easy reach all controls, including the button for driving modes, which can also be controlled by the paddle shifter on the steering wheel. The modes include normal, comfort, dynamic and individual. In the latter, the on-board computer assesses recent driving style and adjusts suspension, transmission and shift points to your liking.
The information screens behind the steering wheel can be switched. The stitched leather would suit a bank executive’s suite.
On highway and gravel-pitted roads alike, the suspension felt soft but firm, rigid when you wanted it, supple enough to absorb the bumps. Great for driving, great also for the passengers.
Driving on the Hwy. 401 east of Toronto, the Sportback’s lane-keeping assist, part of the optional driver-assist package, kept the car so neatly between the lines that with hands off the wheel, you got a feel for the future of autonomous driving.
The 3.0-litre V-6 generates 354 horsepower (the four-cylinder version, 252 hp), and jets from zero-to-100 km/h in just under five seconds. In dynamic mode, a light application of the throttle has you quickly leaving passed vehicles in the dust. And yet, in a week driving through a range of roads ranging from clogged Toronto traffic to 80 km/h country roads to the 401 mayhem, the Sportback averaged 7.4 litres/100 km.
The Progressiv and Technik models start at $61,500 and $65,600, plus $2,100 for the tech package.
Sigh. Maybe one day.
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