Top down management in the Audi RS5 Cabriolet

FOR just a few days this summer, Scotsman Motoring’s planets were in alignment. Usually, the moment anything remotely pacy is delivered to The Scotsman garage by the test car fairies, you can pretty much guarantee that the heavens will open and turn the roads into slippery slithers of death, literally putting a dampener on any idea of having fun with the thing and actually putting the foot down.

The RS5 cabriolet is more powerful than the M3, more practical than an F-Type

Likewise, the arrival of any sort of convertible typically summons from the darkest reaches of hell an apocalyptic horde of towering black cumulonimbi that blot out the sun for at least a week.

So when the 444 bhp Audi RS5 Cabriolet thrummed into the garage, I found myself cursing my old school for not including ark construction in its woodwork syllabus.

Remarkably, however, the skies did not blacken, nor did the heavens open, leaving a blissful few days of dry roads and sunshine to make the most of this £77,755 great guffaw in the face of 
Austerity Britain.

Even without options such as the 20-inch alloy wheels, Bang & Olufsen sound system, dynamic ride control and heated seats which our test car came with, the basic RS5 Cabriolet will still set you back £67,500, which puts it in BMW M3 Convertible and Jaguar F-type territory. The Audi is, however, more powerful than the BMW and a lot more practical than the two-seater Jag.

Fabric folding roofs can have a tendency to add a certain hairdressery look to a car, but the ferocious grilled maw at the front, flared wheel arches and brawny stance lend the RS5 a formidable presence on the road.

Start the engine, and the noise backs up the motor’s mean looks, that growl emanating from a naturally aspirated 4.2-litre V8 engine, without any turbocharging.

Set the Dynamic Drive Select to “dynamic”, and the growl from the exhausts becomes even more fearsome, while the suspension stiffens to frankly uncomfortable levels as the slightest twitch of your right foot propels your head back into the Nappa leather headrest at lift-off velocity and your stomach into churn mode. Do this from a standing start, and you’ll hit 62mph in 4.9 seconds.

Despite this, the sheer size of this big slab of metal and leather (1,930kg in all) makes the start of that sprint seem slightly sluggish, while the electric power steering doesn’t seem to transmit enough information from the road to the hands, so it’s hard to discern where you are in terms of grip when cornering at speed. That said, this is a quattro with clever torque vectoring (the car varies the power delivery to each wheel depending on how close to peril you are), so unless you’re a complete hoon at the wheel, you’re unlikely to have much to worry about on that front.

While there’s plenty of fun to be had with just your feet, letting the seven-speed S-tronic dual clutch automatic gearbox do all the work, it’s more gratifying to flick up and down the gears with the flappy paddles that nestle behind the flat-bottomed steering wheel. Keeping the revs above 8,000rpm, you will enjoy the most enthralling notes of the engine’s range.

This thrilling and addictive soundtrack is, of course, best enjoyed with the roof down. The three-layered folding fabric roof retracts into its hideyhole in a pleasing mechanical ballet that lasts 15 seconds and can be activated as long as the car is travelling below 30mph. At car press events, while other more venerable motoring journalists are busy asking the manufacturers’ chief executive pertinent and probing questions about gear ratios and CO2 emissions, the only ones that seem to come into my head are inane and pointless. In this case, it’s: how come it takes two seconds longer to put the roof up? We’ll never know, because I’m too embarrassed to ask.

Despite the sunshine, it was at times a little embarrassing to have the roof down. In the labyrinthine traffic jam that is pre-tram Edinburgh, the roofless motoring journalist is exposed to prolonged scrutiny by canny pedestrians who rightly suspect that the scruffy larrikin behind the wheel cannot (legally) be in rightful possession of such a car. But outside the city, with the open road ahead, the top down and those Bang & Olufsen speakers competing with the bass of the exhaust notes, the RS5 is a joy.

Its bucketloads of power come at a cost, however. All that horsepower, 1,930kg of weight, torque vectoring and prodigious grip make for a machine whose limits are nigh-on impossible to legitimately explore on British roads. Its top speed is restricted to 155mph but in a vehicle that almost stifles a yawn as it soars to 70mph, you’re never really going to give it a prolonged workout on the highway while staying within the law. It’s a big car, and it feels it, especially on wee Scottish country roads.

Whenever the fuel gauge drops below a certain point, Audi’s excellent navigation system chimes in and offers to direct you to the nearest petrol station. If you don’t fill the tank to the brim every time you pull up to the pumps, that chime could well punctuate your life. Audi claims an average fuel consumption of 26.4mpg, but I struggled to get above 16mpg, despite positively nursing the car home when my bank balance started flashing red.

Such concerns, along with polar bear-worrying CO2 emissions of 
249g/km, are unlikely to be at the forefront of the average RS5 Cabriolet-buyer’s mind, however. They’re looking for something that’s powerful and planted, sexy and practical, and in the Audi RS5 Cabriolet, they’ll find it. And I’ll always have a soft spot for it because for a fleeting few sunny days at the end of August, the Scotsman curse of the rain-soaked cabriolet was quite spectacularly lifted.

VITAL STATS

CAR Audi RS5 Cabriolet 4.2 FSI

PRICE £77,755 as driven

PERFORMANCE Max speed 155mph limited; 0-60mph 4.9s

MPG (combined) 26.4mpg

CO2 EMISSIONS 249g/km