Beauty can blind you.
I know – and not, I assure you, from peering into mirrors at Chateau Box. Back last century, when I was slipping and sliding through Lake Highlands High School, I decided to sell my faded '56 Chevy two-door sedan for a four-door '58 Ford with fresh $150 dark green paint, new $80 black Naugahyde seat covers and a set of chromed, reversed wheels.
I felt pretty hot in my square, sluggish, 292-powered Henry – right up to the day a kingpin fell out, causing the left front wheel to collapse loudly right as I pulled up in front of my girlfriend's.

That memory murmured to me as I walked around a red '08 Audi S5 recently, quite possibly one of the most beautiful four-passenger coupes I have ever seen. I couldn't help but wonder what sort of darkness might be hiding beneath the taut, subtly curvaceous surface of this '08 dazzler.
Not enough to vaguely interest even a North Dallas psychotherapist, as I discovered. In fact, the S5 is one of those rare cars that looks good and drives, handles and performs just as well.
The new 5-series Audi slots in between the A4 and A6 models and is the first Audi on a new platform that will ultimately underpin A4, A6 and even A8 models.
The biggest difference between the A5/S5 models and the current A4 sedans is the new car has less overhang up front. That reduces the weight over the front wheels from 61.9 percent of the car's total heft to 57.7 percent – a pretty substantial drop in a car given to understeer in spirited driving.
In other words, the all-wheel-drive S5 should feel a bit more like a rear-wheel-drive car – or more specifically, like the BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes it competes against. (Just for the record: the S5 is the sports version of the A5 and gets a V-8 in place of a V-6 and other modifications.)
Like all S5s, mine was powered by Audi's sweetly raucous 4.2-liter V-8, a direct-injected engine that in this car cranks out 354 horsepower. The $57,515 coupe was equipped – properly, I say – with a pretty sweet six-speed stick that was fun even in the morning bump-and-shove on the evil Dallas North Crawlway.

With the power flowing to all four wheels, the S5 blasts to 60 in less than five seconds and howls happily through the quarter-mile in about 13.5 seconds at around 105 mph. That's muscle car performance, and with an average fuel consumption of 14 miles per gallon city and 21 highway, it's as profligate as a muscle car. (On the computer readout, the mileage in my S5 varied from, uh, 7 mpg to 17, which is partly a reflection of someone's being overly enthusiastic with a certain pedal.)
No one, though, will ever mistake the S5 for one of those muscled-up ego-coupes with skunk stripes painted down the middle of it. Although it weighs in at a hefty 3,800 pounds – one of several drawbacks with all-wheel drive – the Audi manages to look and feel sleekly substantial.

Car wash showoff
I think it starts with a steeply raked windshield and blacked-out center roof pillars, which give the car a dashing, hardtop persona. The sides are also special, with a strong character line above the fenders complemented by a swooping body line down low. The S5's fenders are slightly flared and muscular, throwing curves and a few flat surfaces into this symphony of style.

It's a car, I'll bet, that would be a pleasure to wash. (And could you really say that about your significant other?)
The look is further embellished by beautiful 10-spoke, 19-inch wheels wearing meaty 255/35 tires. In back, the body line along the edge of the trunk kicks up, mimicking a spoiler without being overtly gold-chain boy-racer.
Inside, the S5 was typical Audi. Mine had black leather interior with subtle nickel trim on the doors, dashboard and console. The well-bolstered seats were unusually smooth, with an intriguing "U" pattern in the center.
The dashboard was a mix of curves and floating lines, creating a pretty nice place to work.
And work this car does. At idle, the S5's lusty V-8 has a rich sort of thrum to it, like two Subaru STIs running side-by-side. But as you push past 3,000, the motor assumes a silky growl that grows to an aristocratic bellow above 5,000 rpm.

While smooth as the butter in a rich man's $10,000 refrigerator, the engine is slightly peaky – preferring 2,000 rpm or so to launch. But with 11-to-1 compression and a 3.89 final drive ratio, the S5 builds speed quickly.
Stand on it hard, and the car happily slings you from gear to gear – howling to 7,000 rpm and into I-need-a-lawyer territory in seconds. For the most part, I liked the low-effort shifter and clutch, which made the always aggravating Crawlway almost tolerable for a minute or two.
But catch the shifter wrong or be lazy with an upshift, and it felt notchy and vague.
But I didn't have a single complaint about the S5's sporting ride – and I'm pretty grumpy about most everything these days. It felt great – firm with no body roll but fluid enough to allow a banged-up middle-aged guy to hit bumps without groaning. You do get a fair amount of clomp from those low-profile, 35-series tires, but that's a relatively small price to pay. Turn up the 180-watt stereo. Problem solved.

Then the steering ...
I was less enthusiastic about the steering, which seems a little artificial on all-wheel-drive cars. With so much weight over the front wheels, the steering in these cars tends to be overly boosted at low speeds and feels light.
That was true of the S5, but the steering tightens with speed, and by the time you hit highway velocities, it was about as good as a rear-wheel-drive sportster. As you would expect with all-wheel drive, the S5 has good grip in corners.

Still, because of the all-wheel-drive, I figured understeer was lurking out there somewhere – that irritating moment when the front wheels succumb to the weight on top of them and slide out before the rear wheels in a hard corner. But even with all-wheel-drive, the S5 feels mostly neutral at moderate speeds – albeit a bulky neutral.
My only semi-complaint was with the eight buttons that surround the shifter on the console. If you rest your arm on the console for a second between shifts, you end up activating the navigation system or opening someone's garage door in Plano or downloading something salacious from a satellite in space.

I'm not sure how you justify a car like this. For most people, it costs way too much and does too little. It could transport four adults a short distance, but probably not in great comfort. If I had a real job, I wouldn't worry about trying to make practical sense of a car like the S5. I'm not much interested in cars that make me look good – a fairly tall order, so to speak. I like cars that me feel good, and few do that better than the S5.
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