Source: http://www.fourtitude.com/news/publi...cle_1940.shtml

Perhaps it was part of a Christmas bonus for the employees, or a renegade draftsman who broke into his piggy bank in an act of selfless charity towards his fellow coworkers, but someone has gifted the designers in Ingolstadt a set of curved stencils. This is nowhere more evident than the seventh-generation of Audi's B-chassis cars, first introduced to us as the mid-year 2005 A4 and now embodied in the 2006 S4 Avant.

Gentle slopes and subtle contours permeate the front and rear of the new S4. Once a smile-free bastion of Bauhaus influence, the 2005.5 redesign adds much-needed levity to a car that, for generations, featured styling as rigid and inflexible as the German rail schedule. The new head and tail lamps are faired into the body work, and the S4 now bears Audi's new corporate face: A large trapezoidal grille that, in further proof of how just badly designers at some other German brands have been mixing the grain with the grape, seems restrained and decorous when viewed alongside its contemporaries.

The headlamps of the Avant are particularly clever. The low beams are high-intensity projector units and can swing up to twenty degrees to either side in response to steering input, to illuminate not just the road ahead but the dog sleeping at the apex of the next curve. I discovered that it's quite a useful feature when driving through the boonies, where every fifth corner seems to be populated by that dog or a discarded console TV. Sometimes both.




The body of the Audi is an object study in assembly quality. Panel gaps are obsessively uniform, and unions between bumpers and sheet metal are more perfectly matched than peanut butter and chocolate. A definition crease running down its flanks ties the stem to the stern and serves to equalize the wagon's proportions. With its prominent front overhang and pert rear end, the S4 Avant could pass for Hollywood's idealized stereotype of a hooker. And like Tinseltown trollops, the S4 Avant has a heart of pure gold.

Powering every S4 is a peach of a 4.2-liter, all-aluminum V8. With five-valve cylinder heads, variable cam timing and a dual-path intake manifold, the 90-degree engine pulls clean up to its 7,000-rpm redline without breathing heavily. Simply starting the car and listening to its mellifluous intake rush mixed with the hearty burble of its dual exhausts is sinfully indulgent enough to make a nun blush. Open the electronically-controlled throttle fully, and the two distinct notes play off each other, cresting together in a smooth ballet of internal combustion as they reach their climax just south of fuel cutoff; it is aural sex. After you're done looning about and have regained your composure, simply snick the gearshift into sixth and the S4 will hush itself down enough that conversations can be had between the front and rear seats, and no one need raise their voice.

There are many virtues that can be ascribed to the Audi V8, but one of them is not economy. With a final drive geared for acceleration at the merest thought of throttle tip-in - 75mph means about 3,000 rpm in sixth gear - the relatively small S4 returned a pitiable 18 miles per gallon during a 100% highway cycle. Audi says to expect 21mpg on the highway. The Avant is rated at 15 miles per gallon in the city, if you can resist the urge to work the engine fully through its gears. I couldn't and ended up averaging 13mpg around town, at which point the S4 could travel only 210 miles before the on-board trip computer would start nagging for a refueling stop. Premium unleaded fuel is required, as well, and let's not think about the various UNICEF-y things that could be done with the $2,117 which Audi tells buyers that they can expect on spending annually to keep the S4 Avant in fresh petrol. Sure, a Toyota Prius would cost less to fill up, but there are some things in life that are worth the sacrifice. Go for the S4, and the only forfeiture you need to make is monetary. The Toyota, your dignity. Advantage: Audi.

The only downside to the drivetrain is the transmission behind that gem of a powerplant. One has to wonder why the Japanese have been capable of producing six-speed manuals that almost telepathically glide through their actions for the better part of fifteen years, while the Germans insist on making every gear change a tug-of-war between the driver and the Getrag cogs that don't want to mesh without a fight. The shifter itself is a meaty, leather-wrapped wonder to behold, but its action is vague and balky. Several testers would, when driving spiritedly, attempt to shift into third only to hit the gate between it and first. What's worse, the Germans seem to equate clutch-pedal stiffness with power-holding capacity; I got into a Subaru Legacy after driving the Avant, and the pedal hit the floor so fast I thought I had snapped it off. My leg was going numb in the Audi after being stuck in the typical Chicago six-lane parking lot - also known as the Edens Expressway - for an hour, and the quick take-up made creeping forward with traffic difficult. Drivers with similarly hellacious daily commutes would be well advised to pony up $1200 extra for the Tiptronic model.

The cabin boasts typically fine Audi quality and peerless tactile feedback. Everything falls readily to hand, and thoughtful touches abound. The center console has two twelve-volt power outlets; the cruise control features are not on the steering wheel, but a separate stalk underneath the turn signal lever. There are enough pockets, bins, and cubbies - including a thoughtful pop-out tray on the dashboard for parking passes - to satisfy even the most jaded of pack rats. Both driver and passenger are cradled in buttock-hugging heated Recaro sport seats that have twelve different power adjustments and are swathed in creamy Nappa leather. Rear-seat passengers are also treated to heated Recaro seats, but their only adjustment is to fold flat, in a 60/40 split, opening up the rear of the wagon to carry even more cargo.




Our tester was equipped with Audi Navigation Plus, a DVD-based system that works in stark contrast to previous VW-group navigation systems because it is actually useful. We tried to get in a situation where the system would feed us incorrect information or become confused - going so far as to take it out to the vast stretches of nowhere in central Illinois that connect the somewheres - and the Audi system refused to let us down. The navigation unit also features Audi's Multi Media Interface, an intuitive rotary controller which encompasses both navigation data entry and controls for the optional Bose premium audio system - an audio setup which more or less failed to please the ear. Even with the manual controls tweaked as far as they would allow, the lack of deep bass and clear highs - long a fault of Bose systems - was notable, especially compared to the Dynaudio upgrade in Volkswagen's Passat. The head unit's 6.5-inch LCD screen motors forwards to expose the navigation-map DVD drive, and two slots that accept MMC or SD cards which can be loaded with MP3s. Audio CDs or MP3 data CDs are played via a glovebox-mounted, slot-loading six-disc changer.

On the road, the S4 is confident. Thanks in part to the quattro system's new bias, which by default sends sixty percent of available power to the rear wheels, the propensity for the two-ton wagon to understeer has been nearly eliminated. Novice S4 drivers may instinctively lift of the throttle when approaching a corner, but unless you're brave you will never experience the car's greatness as the loads of grip and the quattro all-wheel-drive pull it through corners without a hint of drama. The 235/40-18 Michelin Pilot Sport tires are unwilling to yield to lateral loads, and the integrated Bosch ESP stability control system does an admirable job of smoothing out an aspiring Mario's inevitable mistakes. The result is clean, civilized acceleration regardless of the road conditions.

The rest of the chassis is the result of engineering that borders somewhere between skill and black arts. The suspension is firm and keeps the Avant flat through corners, but the combination of an extremely stiff body and perfectly matched spring and damping rates means that the ride is never harsh or jarring. The steering is communicative - far more so than previous S4s - yet stays nicely planted on the highway, where it locks onto dead center and is mercifully free of requiring minor corrections. The only complaint at all is that the Servotronic speed-sensitive power steering tends to add too much artificial effort on the open road, but given the Audi's position in the market as an upscale cruiser and not a track warrior, it's understandable.

With a base price of $47,400 - our tester was loaded up and chimed in at $57,320 - the S4 Avant slots comfortably between Dodge's Magnum SRT-8 and the Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG. Yet neither of those are nearly as fun to toss around as the Audi, and the Avant is the only one of the three to offer a true manual transmission. The bottom line? Audi's new S4 Avant is good enough reason to turn off your computer right now and go make some babies. 2007 models will be arriving in showrooms in about nine more months, so get crackin'.