A5 Sportback 45 TFSI quattro S line competition plus

STORY

The Audi A5 arrived in 2007 as the brand's mid-size coupe, spun off the A4's platform to give Audi a stylish two-door rival to the BMW 3 Series Coupe and Mercedes CLK. Penned under design chief Walter de Silva, the original A5 was hailed as one of Audi's most elegant shapes and quickly grew into a family of Coupe, Cabriolet and five-door Sportback models, each topped by S5 and RS5 performance versions. A second generation followed in 2016 on the lighter MLB Evo platform, the RS5 trading its 4.2 V8 for a 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6. In 2024 the name took on a bigger role: as part of Audi's move to odd numbers for combustion cars, the new PPC-based A5 replaced the A4 saloon and Sportback to become Audi's core mid-size petrol and diesel model.