Five is a very nice number. Five plus five makes 10 is the basic rule of math. A hand is made up of five fingers. I need 5 minutes. Take 5. High-five me. Audi hits its peak when five pistons are put behind the four rings. Talk to Stephan Reil, Audi’s old head of vehicle research for the RS division, before you trust us. He said that the Audi TT RS’s five-cylinder engine (instead of a 4.2-liter V-8 or a twin-turbo V-10) was his best RS achievement while driving many RS6 Avant models through the Canadian Rockies. Give me five, Stephan. The inline-five turns into the great Five-Oh the next year. It comes from the Ur-Quattro, the first all-wheel-drive car and the model from which all fast Audis are based. The Ur-Quattro is happiest driving sideways on snow. After years of testing, we’ve found that five pistons moving four wheels is the best setup for Audis. Let’s not worry about it and get to the point. In the middle of the 1970s, Audi introduced the first five-cylinder engine in the Audi 100. The original Audi Quattro was released in 1980. It had a turbocharger (which would become the defining feature of Audis for years) and all-wheel drive. The Sport Quattro was a homologation special built to meet WRC rules. However, the normal Quattro gave a very different driving experience than any quick Mercedes or BMW. It was shorter and bigger than a standard Quattro coupe. Its five-cylinder engine made over 300 horsepower on the road and well over 500 when racing. The Sport Quattro was very popular in racing circles, but Michał Mouton’s 1985 run up Pikes Peak to win the event was probably its most amazing performance. Mouton was the first and only woman to be crowned King (or Queen) of the Mountain. She showed the rest of the field what a five could do. Rennsport gives you both usefulness and speed that comes from racing. The first Audi RS was supposed to be a coupe, but Porsche, a partner in engineering, said that wouldn’t work with what they were doing. The RS2 was the end product. It was a five-cylinder, four-door station wagon that could, for a short time, take off faster than a McLaren F1 because of a high-rpm holeshot. That’s a big claim for a car that can easily fit one or two Labradoodles. The RS2 eventually helped make Audi’s fast wagon history possible. Its five-cylinder engine made 311 horsepower when used this way, but now it will be seen in a design that isn’t as useful. For example, the first-generation Audi TT RS had a 2.5-liter inline-five engine that was tuned to deliver 360 horsepower. The TT RS was the most powerful form of Audi’s small R8 coupe. It had four rings, five cylinders, and a six-speed manual transmission. Later, Audi used a dual-clutch gearbox to reduce the number of pedals from 3 to 2. They added one more gear (seven total) and increased the boost, which gave them an additional 40 horsepower. For people who still want a four-door, the strong RS3 delivers great speed and grip across a range of weather conditions. Little by little, it’s not any more interesting to look at than the other things in Audi’s Fifty Shades of Gray catalog, unless you buy it in a bright color. But its 2.5-liter inline-five engine with 20 valves, which puts out 394 horsepower at 7000 rpm, makes it sound unique, as if Walter Röhrl’s spirit were driving it. This is a smart choice because Walter is still full of life. Audi’s five-cylinder has two issues at 50: it is about to be electrified, and powertrains need to be streamlined to save on research and development costs. For now, five are still fighting.
