2025 Audi A5 and S5 drive: The fastback needs the S treatment to sizzle

We sample Audi's next sedan in the Colorado mountains.

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[Snark218]

They did this cheap cost cutting trash in the recent Q5 refresh too.. it's gross. Audi has jumped the shark and is banking on brand loyalty from suckers at this point. Time to go buy BMW or some other brand that doesn't sell you shit tea and tell you it's wine. Honda and Toyta can do better than this, at much cheaper prices, to say nothing of Kia and Hyundai.

It sucks. And I get that the EV transition is expensive and so on, but this penny wise, pound foolish nonsense is more damaging to the brand long-term than it's worth it to save. Consolidate build configurations. Share more components with other car companies, get over your NIH hangups. Increase parts commonality with other models. Use parts and systems longer. But if they can do animated OLED rear tail lights, for the love of God, Montressor, they can give us fucking USB-C ports standard.

 

[Snark218]

More capacitive controls in a premium badge . Audi lied when they said they were bringing back proper buttons . They’re not getting my money again when I turn in my q4 lease.

This design was final and in preproduction before they ever announced bringing buttons back. Any announcement like that from a car manufacturer, assume it's at least 3-5 years out.

 

[Snark218]

The front end looks... familiar.View attachment 111907

There's only so many shapes to make a grille, and a design is not just a collection of cues.

 

[Snark218]

If you can live with Toyota steering, which is almost a dealbreaker for me, even a cheap Camry will give you a similar experience while getting 50+ MPG. With much better reliability and resale value.

I don't think the experience is similar, really; maybe 80% of the way there. But this has always been the case with premium brands; they're never the smart buy, there's always a car that delivers 80% of the experience for about 50% of the cost, and they always depreciate like milk. For some, it's still worth driving a car that's not a Camry, and I find that understandable.

 

[Snark218]

Audi really needs to evolve it's styling. The A5 looks like a 90s Audi with an angry grille tacked on. Add in the capacitive controls and how often even the 4 cylinder cars are in the shop, and there are are better ways to spend $50-60k. I'd sooner buy a Mazda

I don't think Audi's problem is its styling. It doesn't look like a '90s model - it really does not - and entry-level European executive sedans are by their nature conservative, bland designs.

The cheapening of the interior and driving experience, reliability, and expensive maintenance is the problem, and they seem clueless about how to address those things.

 

[Snark218]

I absolutely ADORE my 2014 A4. Very sad to see that line go away.

Only in Germany will it make sense to anyone to axe their best-selling entry-level model, the model that defined their brand for the last 25 years, because of a perceived need for a contrived naming strategy for EV and ICE models.

 

[Snark218]

I agree with other posters, it's not a wagon/estate but it has a (sloping) fifth door, so it's a hatchback. But Ars insists on calling it a sedan nevertheless, as they've always done.

"Hatchback" colloquially refers to something like a Golf or Focus. This is not that. It's still a three-box shape with three roof pillars, four doors, and a low ride height, and most readers would categorize it as a sedan. And fastback sedans are a thing.

I will never understand why people get so wrapped around the axle about which rigid, unchanging category a given car slots into. There's lots of overlap between form factors and their names are all descriptive, vague marketing terms. It's kind of dickish to snipe at an author because they fail to use your preferred, subjective definition of what a sedan is. Hatch, fastback, sedan, who cares?

 

[Snark218]

Yes. Like a crossover is a tall station wagon. But shush, you'll step on people's insecurities if you mention that.

Nah, you really won't. Nobody gives a shit. Sure, my car's a tall station wagon. Call it whatever. Crossover drivers seem to have a free parking pass in your head, but I assure you none of us actually cares much what you think about our cars, and you spend vastly more time thinking about what we drive than we will ever spend on the inverse.

 

[Snark218]

Rear hatch seems better than a traditional sedan trunk, but its silly to not offer this in a wagon format. All you'd do is just reshape the rear quarter and hatch shape a bit.. I think the hinge itself could stay right in the same spot, right?

If you reshape the rear quarter and hatch shape a bit, you've redesigned the roof pillars, and that requires separate certification and testing under US law, because the US requires much higher roof crush strength than other markets. It's never trivial, ever, to offer multiple body styles in the US, so if you do, it's got to be a guaranteed sales home run. And wagons aren't, to put it bluntly.

 

[Snark218]

I used to really love Audi's designs. They've utterly lost their way, you're so right, it's utterly bland.

Here we are, the Audis look like the most generic cars, and the Kias are making bold choices. 2025 ...

I dunno. I actually kind of like the wider grille shape, and the grille and headlights work well together. Not a giant fan of all the tinsel they've jammed onto the lower fascia, but overall I think the front end is not boring and basically decent looking. The rest of the design is utterly boring but there's only so many ways to do a sedan; that said the outgoing A5 Sportback was about 9000x better.