What's behind new cars, is it more than screens, LEDs and ultra large grills and logos? Are the Germans still as premium as they pretend to be? What is the real life usability and experience in daily driving/trip taking a modern 'premium' offering? Let's find out today.

Open Sesame. Yeah, in reality the current A5 Sportback is not quite as fairytalish as that but it does have its charm.

Audi A5 40 TFSI Review

Welcome to my glimpse into my experience with the Audi A5 which happened by chance last weekend when I had to use a rental car as mine broke down like an hour before we were set to leave for the coast. I reserved a Mini but was upgraded to this beautiful 2019 model Audi A5 Sportback which I had never even really noticed on the road before.

This particular model has a fairly generous options list and comes with Navigation Plus package including all kinds of tech gizmos like internet, GPS, Bluetooth, large center screen, USB plugs and wireless charging pod. It also has the Audi Drive Select feature which adjusts the ride on the fly between comfort and sport.

It also came with the S package which comes with 18" wheels, sports suspension, fully adjustable power sports seats, multi function leather sports steering wheel and other visual touches which mostly consist of an 'S badge' wherever you look and matte aluminum (aluminium for the Brits) interior trim pieces on an otherwise all black interior including the roof liner.

Drivetrain wise the only external giveaway is the dual exhaust pipes left and right and the badge which ominously states 40 TFSI

If you're new to German cars or, like me, haven't paid attention in a long while to newer cars the way this works today is manufacturers use a few numbers and letters to designate their cars along certain power ranges. So for Audi the 40 means it has anywhere between 180 and 230 horsepower, this particular one having 190hp, while the TFSI tells you it is a direct injection petrol engine - turbocharged four banger in fact. Engine is mated to a 7 speed automatic transmission.

Exterior color was an appealing dark grey metallic and the windows were pleasantly untinted in the back.

Now that we've got the facts out of the way we can look at the big three review criteria: Usability, Driveability and Design. I'll wrap up with some economy and cost figures at the end.

Usability

This being a weekend trip to the coast it was ideal to test the car in the city, on the highway as well as during trips to the beach and all that entails.

First of all, the haptics and ergonomics of this car are excellent as well as the quality of the materials and fit and finish. Everything feels very nice and solid and any switches, door handles, surfaces and functions are well executed and worked flawlessly.

Trunk is very large and easily accessible through the power trunklid and low rise cutout.

It also has quite a smart split top cover with one half attached to the lid and the other half hovering behind the backseat.

Seats are very comfortable and have easily accessible and intuitive power switches including fully adjustable lumbar support.

I was glad that the seats weren't fully leather wrapped as it got quite hot during the trip as you shall see later and the AC was struggling to keep up with extremely hot outside temps so having some clima cloth on the center section of the seat was very pleasant.

This car being sort of a crossover between a classic sedan, a 4 door coupe meaning low roofline and the classic Audi hatchback with the rear window extending to the very end of the car means it looks very good but at the same time has some inhibiting consequences. First of all the doors are frameless:

Looks great except for the fact that the lack of structural support the doors would usually provide has to be compensated by the roof and especially the B pillar which means it is very wide and thick. This means that if you're average or above height you will sit back to the point of having the B Pillar right next to your shoulder and arm. The rear part of the door that should usually support your arm sit forward so far that the armrest actually is kind of useless:

It sits too low and too far forward. Also when entering and exiting the car you sort of swing by the B pillar into the seat.

Another downside which I actually do not understand at all is that the rear windows will not fully retract:

Even though they added a support section in front of the C pillar whose sole reason is usually the ability to lower the window fully it will not go down all the way.

On the bright side, some cars with frameless doors like the Audi TT, Mercedes CLS and many convertibles usually make entering and exiting a (potentially literal) pain as you run the risk of hitting your head either on the roof pillar or the window itself which this Audi successfully avoids. The roofline is low but high enough to allow totally normal usability.

Instrument cluster and display readability and anti glare function perfectly and everything is very cleaned up and well sorted:

Light switches and steering column stalks are well placed and, again, haptics are best in class in terms of pushing, pulling, actuating, switching anything on or off.

This extends to the climate control panel which is a nice mixture of buttons, knobs and digital displays with dynamically changing indicators. The display has a proximity sensor that actually highlights any function whose button you're getting close to with your fingers - very nice.

We drove this over days in the brightest sunlight and at no point was anything unreadable or compromised in any way. All in all the cabin is probably the car's biggest plus:

As for the steering wheel it is beautifully crafted, has the right size and is multi functional with very intuitive buttons and scrolling wheels and shift paddles. Also note the frameless rear view mirror - nice feature on newer cars and you quickly get used to it.

Cupholders, an often neglected feature, are nicely executed and accomodate a variety of bottles, cans and cups without inhibiting any functionality even though large bottles will sit slightly in front of some of the climate control buttons:

An often loathed characteristic of new cars is outside visibility - as in there is none. This Audi is no exception with extremely thick pillars which are also very wide:

That being said, it does the best it can to allow easy maneuverability through it's camera and sensor systems displayed on the main screen.

The center armrest suffers from the same issues as the door one only reversed as it actually sits too far back. You can extend it out so it slides forward but not enough so you always find yourself not using it at all or (especially if driver and passenger are of unequal height) only one person using it properly. It is height adjustable and below it is a very convenient compartment including the wireless charging pad.

One thing to note is the excellent cabin ergonomics in terms of placement and storage space, buttons on the doors are well sorted and perfectly placed:

There is an ingenius coin compartment (lower right) and resting your hand on the flat airplane like shifter allows for easy operation of the car systems:

The main navigation knob rotates and clicks in all directions and here as well Audi did very well as everything is where you'd expect it.

As for navigation and functionality the instrument cluster screen can be turned into a map so you can use the main screen for something else or simply use two maps at different resolutions:

Only downside to the navigation, same in all Audis, is the inputting of addresses using the knob is tedious as you rotate through a horizontal list of letters with suggestions popping up very delayed and do not limit the selection accordingly. In BMWs for instance you get a circular alphabet and as you select your letters like B, E, R...it will blank out and remove any letters for which no city and street names exist which makes inputting addresses quick and easy.

Screen has just the right size and, as stated above, anti glare and readability as well as resolution of all screens is ideal. Response time is a bit laggy especially compared to BMW and MBUX. Good thing about the instrument cluster is you actually get real gauges mixed with screens which gives you a very nice, old school and branded experience with the car.

The only other section of the interior I haven't discussed is the roof 'control center' which is quite classic including interior light switches, SOS button and reading lights. The car did not come equipped with a sunroof so I can't speak to that specifically except for the lack of wind noise that was very pleasant on this particular car.

All in all an overall very good ergonomics and usability concept is ruined by a few small details. Not being able to us the door armrest would drive me mad on long trips and during daily driving. Same goes for the center armrest to a lesser extent. Frameless doors that look great are compromised by super thick pillars especially the B pillar extending too far forward plus rear windows don't go down fully.

If you don't mind these aspects you're rewarded with a great steering wheel, gear selector, excellent seats, world class materials and fit and finish and an overall very functional and accessible tech suite plus a great audio system that make actual time in the cabin very enjoyable.

The Drive

Yeah, this is where things fall apart. The upside is the engine and throttle response. It is very quick and agile and offers plenty of power no matter what your speed or gear. The 7 speed gearbox shifts with immediate and flawless gear changes and helps the car to very low rpms during highway cruising:

Engine is a bit on the unrefined side and is about as quiet and smooth as a 4 banger turbo engine will ever be.

The downside is the steering. When we first drove the car I was riding in the passenger seat and the constant sterring corrections made me feel borderline sick. Once I got behind the wheel I realised that this in fact is what Audi was going for with this model - an ultra twitchy and down to the last millimeter steering response. That might be useful when parking or going into roundabouts but over 40mph/70kmh it turns into a nightmare.

The steering has no dead zone meaning that even the slightest touch of the wheel instantly translates into noticable steering actuation. The result is about the most unrelaxed and stressful driving experience I've ever had in any car. It is beyond me how they managed to mess up the steering system which I assume is electric to such an extent. I drove the car 3 hours straight on the way to the coast and almost 5 on the way back and the entire time it was nauseating. Once you reach speeds over 120mph/180kmh it's downride scary as the car becomes nervous to the point that you actually upset the balance especially in fast turns.

Next to the ride, which I'll deal with below, this is an instant dealbreaker for me on this car. What good are all the design and production refinement goodies if you can't actually enjoy the driving experience? Maybe the quattro all wheel drive version is better but this was pretty awful.

Another issue with Audis in the past were the inherent torque forces in the steering due to the front wheel drive and it turned driving into pretty much a pain. Imagine going into a roundabout and upon exiting you let go of the steering wheel expecting it to rotate back to neutral but instead it stays in place and doesn't move an inch - true story happened to me in a 2000 Audi TT.

I'm happy to report that this has gotten resolved over the years and the A5's steering does at least that right with a good balance overall and a tendency to return to base once you let go of the wheel in a turn. Steering forces as such were almost unnoticable and the overall power of the steering is very strong - I'm talking S Class Mercedes strong. You can steer with your pinky no questions asked - not my preference but I could live with it in the absence of the hyper sensitive base setting.

Consumption is on the high end which you would expect from an Audi, around 9-10L tending more towards 10L/100km under normal conditions. Once you constantly hit it above 80mph/120kmh it does go up but given the fear of God inducing steering the highest speed I reached was 140mph/225kmh and that only for a split second.

The Ride

Another let down but that is not due to the Audi's particular setup more of an industry wide trend. To hit the abnormally low avg consumption goals and emissions regulations the cars are setup very hard. Damping and spring settings are very stiff and at no point you can refer to it as a smooth ride. There are 4 settings in the so called 'Audi Dynamic' ride settings - they all felt the same with the sport one being so hard that you'd rather use an original Mini.

That's not to say that it feels unrefined, cabin is very quiet and insulated, engine is as well. Everything feels very composed and the way it handles speed bumps or any other road condition is always in a solid manner but you feel every bit of it. It's the opposite of floating or gliding in that it feels like a BMW M3 with a KW Coilover suspension only with less travel.

Brakes are very good including pedal feel and travel and are probably the brightside of any of the drivetrain/suspension components in terms of driving experience.

The Design

What we're left with then is what makes Audi so 'bling' in the past decade - the design. It is a beautiful vehicle inside and out especially benefiting from its world class manufacturing refinement. Panel gaps are super thin and equalized throughout, materials flow into one another and the whole thing is just nice to look at, sit in and spend time with - as long as you're not driving it...which kind of is the point of it all.

Enjoy these impressions and let me know what you think below!