What's the news?
If you've been keeping an eagle-eye on the Audi Ireland pricelists recently, you might notice some of the brand's high-performance cars have disappeared from view for a brief hiatus - this is to do with WLTP testing in the wake of 'Dieselgate'. Well, one of those cars was the striking S5 - but now it has returned... as a diesel.
This is not as big a shock as it might sound, on the face of it. Audi Ireland, for instance, never took the Mk2 SQ5 TFSI, instead waiting for the SQ5 TDI to be announced instead. We already know that the latest S6 and S7 motors will be TDIs, so the S5 following suit is probably to be expected - so far, the Coupe and Sportback types have been confirmed, with the S5 Cabriolet conspicuous from this news update by its absence.
Anyway, the S5 TDI uses the very 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel that has been slotted into all of the aforementioned SQ5, S6 and S7 models. That means it packs 347hp and 700Nm, with an electric-powered compressor (EPC) powered by a mild 48-volt hybrid system doing the torque-infill work. In either the S5 Coupe TDI or S5 Sportback TDI, CO2 emissions are between 161- and 163g/km, while fuel economy stands at 6.2 litres/100km (45.6mpg). That, says Audi, means the TDI S5s are 19 per cent more fuel efficient than their 354hp/500Nm TFSI predecessors, yet performance is almost directly comparable: the S5 Coupe TDI does 0-100km/h in 4.8 seconds and the Sportback takes 4.9 seconds, times which are 0.1 and 0.2 seconds off their petrol-powered forebears respectively. Top speed, as ever, is limited to 250km/h.
Other than that, everything else is as it was before on the S5: the same eight-speed Tiptronic automatic gearbox, the same quattro all-wheel-drive system, the same looks and interior and technology packs available. It's basically just a straight swap from a 3.0-litre V6 petrol to a 3.0-litre V6 diesel that we're talking about here.
Anything else?
The new S5 TDI models will be on sale in their native Germany from May, at a price of €65,300. That should mean the Audi's price will be similar as a diesel as it was to a petrol here in Ireland, so around €80,000.