To celebrate a quarter-century of its RS4 super-estate, Audi has announced an enhanced special edition of the RS 4 Avant, alongside an RS 5 Sportback with a similar performance boost.
Connoisseurs with a need for speed will get very excited by the latest version of Audi’s RS 4 Avant. Christened the “edition 25 years”, this limited edition offers a lot more over the regular RS 4 than just a clunky name extension. The chassis has been tweaked for superior handling, but it also features some improvement lies in the engine room, where an added 15 kW should bring more drama to the driving experience of the effortless but somewhat clinical RS 4.
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Only 250 examples will be built, and it’s still unclear whether any of these special RS 4 Avants will make their way to South Africa. However, the RS 5 Sportback can also be had with the same engine revision, and Audi didn’t mention restricted availability for the “performance edition” derivative of this model, so it is likely that we’ll see the hotter RS 5 Sportback in local showrooms in due course.
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Audi RS 4 Avant edition 25 years drivetrain changes
The normal RS 4’s twin-turbo 2.9-litre V6 engine serves in the edition 25 years as well, but has been calibrated to produce 346 kW in this application. Torque remains unchanged at 600 Nm, however, indicating that the revised engine tune should mainly improve on the normal RS 4’s surprisingly muted high-rev performance.
To go with the more aggressive engine map, the 8-speed torque converter automatic gearbox has also been reprofiled to perform quicker gear changes, and now offer greater differentiation between drive modes. Also included is the quattro sport rear differential (with clutch-based torque vectoring) and the rest of the normal RS 4’s rear-biased AWD system.
These changes amount to a 0 - 100 km/h sprint in a claimed 3.7 seconds - a decent 0.4 seconds quicker than the standard car. Carbon-ceramic brakes will help the RS 4 Avant edition 25 shed speed as quickly as it gathers it, while an “RS sport exhaust system plus” with matte-black tail pieces will do its utmost to help the V6 sound its best. It ain’t an eight-thousand-rev V8, but it will have to do…
Detail suspension revisions for sharper handling
It is not as though the normal RS 4 Avant is in any way incompetent when the road gets twisty, since it already has the kind of engineered-in balance which recalls the dynamic behaviour of a Mitsu Evo 8. This is high praise indeed, but the limited-edition model should be even more capable and enjoyable, because its chassis features the “RS sport suspension pro” package as standard equipment.
This is a steel-spring setup which reduces the ride height by 10 mm in comparison to the regular RS 4 Avant. An additional 10 mm ride height reduction can then be achieved through manual adjustment, giving a 20 mm lower ride than the series-production RS 4 Avant. This lower stance will bring obvious handling benefits, while the stiffer springs are bound to improve body control during enthusiastic driving.
But, hidden away in Audi’s official press release for this car are two other important details: The front camber angle has been increased to 2 degrees, and the front control arms are reinforced. The combined effect will be even greater eagerness to turn into corners, more mid-corner grip, and further reductions in understeer.
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Cosmetic differences
Discreet touches are applied to the limited-edition RS 4 Avant inside and out, to make it look and feel a bit more special than the regular car. The headline item has to be the Imola Yellow paintwork, which was a signature colour for the original (B5) RS4, and returns as an exclusive feature on the 25-year anniversary model. Nardo Gray and Mythos Black are also available, but yellow just seems proper for this application.
Apart from its default colour, the absence of roof rails is a key exterior distinction, while all the exterior brightwork is finished in gloss black. There are also new black inserts in the tail lights, matte carbon aero add-ons and “RS 4 edition 25 years” engraved in the rearmost side glass, all exclusive to this limited-edition model.
Yellow accent stiching is used on the seats, steering wheel, centre console, gear selector, and arm rest, and everything red or gloss-black that are RS-specific are yellow as well. See why the exterior simply has to be yellow too? Finally, the centre console boasts the car’s build number, and the digital dashboard can be configured to offer a white background, as high-performance Audis featured on their analog dials decades ago.
Audi RS 5 Sportback performance edition
This one is almost a certainty for South Africa, because it’s not a limited-run model. The Audi RS 5 Sportback performance edition features the same retuned biturbo V6 engine (and presumably also the revised gearbox mapping) as the 25th anniversary RS 4 Avant, giving it the same 15 kW power boost for a new peak of 346 kW.
The RS 5 Sportback performance will get to 100 km/h in a claimed 3.7 seconds, taking 0.2 seconds off the regular model’s sprint time. The handling benefits from the same spring/damper package as featured in the limited-edition RS 4 Avant, but no mention is made of any camber changes in front, so it probably won’t be quite as sharp to drive as the wagon.
Martin Pretorius
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