The sound a performance car emits from its engine and exhaust may not make it any faster, but it forms an integral part of the driving experience.
That point isn’t lost on Audi, which tuned its new RS4 Avant to sound as good as it looks and drives. And that’s no easy feat, considering that the RS4 has, in this latest iteration, ditched the old naturally aspirated V8 for a twin-turbo V6.
With 450 hp and 443 lb-ft of torque on offer, the new RS4 is no less powerful but a lot torquier than its eight-cylinder predecessor, yielding significant performance gains. Instead of the spritely 4.7 seconds the last one took to reach 62 miles per hour from a standstill, the new model takes just 4.1 – which is a fair bit quicker.
Though the turbochargers can add a layer of aural complexity, most would agree that turbo engines, muffled by the interference of the spools on their exhaust systems, tend to sound less exciting than naturally aspirated ones. So Audi certainly had its work cut out for itself to make the new RS4 stir our sense of sound as much as it does the other emotions.
To what extent it may have succeeded is a largely subjective matter. But after listening to it, in the following video, just cooling down after being “driven hard and fast” on track, we’d say that the folks at Audi Sport GmbH did a bang-up job on this one.