2009 Audi S5
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- Engine Size: 4.2L - 8 Cylinders
- Style: Exotic Performance
- Fuel Type: Gasoline
- Model: S5
- Year: 2009
- Class: Coupe
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Awsome car
Pros
V8 matched to quattro AWD and LED lights
Cons
Slightly hard ride, minor engine drove @ highway speed.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you have the money for the S5 go for it, if not the A5 is just as comfortable, you just loose out on the power trip.
I usually start off with the bad in my reviews, but I really haven't anything bad about the car yet. now granted I only picked it up on Dec. 3rd and I have only driven it 110mi so far. (It's been snowy and slushy). The only thing I have to pick on about it is more the dealer than the car but more on it later. And I will apologize for the small scattered approach to this review, but I want to cover a lot of ground and don’t want to make this too lengthy as it wouldn’t be easy to read.
I have noticed that the brakes squeal awfully loud and badly. I have read in the Audiworld forums that it is because the S models come with high performance brakes and they need to be bedded-in before that will go away. Not that it won't go away later w/ normal wear, but if you bed the brake properly it will enhance the rotor and pad life, and help the braking ability of the car. See the links for the theory and procedures for doing this below:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp_bedinstock.shtml
I tried to do this last night on my way into work and I had to add a few extra stops into the mix, because it didn’t feel like they were heating up enough and I wasn’t getting a smell or any smoke. Probably because it was 24’F when I was doing it. But we will see if helped or not. I’ll keep it updated as the car wear sin more.
The other things that I will bring up here is that the car has to go back into the dealer to have the passenger side door handle fixed/repainted. This is because someone seemingly broke a small section of paint away down to the black plastic underneath on its way over from Germany. So hopefully they don’t have to pull apart the entire door and make a mess of it, since we all know once something comes apart it never goes back together correctly.
So now how about some positives. First the steering wheels is a very nice size and thickness. Plus it has several area around it where the thickness varies and makes for a very nice drive. It is not like the TT’s wheel that flattens out on the bottom and makes it hard to let the wheel slip through your hands coming off a turn. The S5’s is round, but and the bumps are really not intrusive at all, just comfortable.
The wipers are a point of contention for me. I like intermittant wipers that stay where I put the speed level at. I hate rain sensing wipers. If I want to have the wipers on slow or fast, I would put them there. If I want it to be the slowest setting on the intermittant then THAT is where I want it. You may as well not even have an intermittant setting because the car does what it wants with the speed no matter how you it set. So I just keep it off and use the single wipe.
Along with the wipers I must address the winshield washers. You have six directed and heated nozzles. When you are going at least 35MPH the hit perfectly on the windshield, hwy speed (55+) they spray pretty low on the window, and when you are stopped, the two outer most are going to spray the car the to the right and the left respectively. Just hope its not a big steroid freak in a convertible you end up spraying. (Then again you should be able to easily leave hit at the light if he has a roid fit from being sprayed lol). Also the headlamps washer activate if you hold the windshield washers on for at least 2 seconds (yes it does waste alot of fluid on the windshield). and again, if you are stopped you are going to give your entire car a wash, from the head lamps the fluid will reflect up onto the hood, windshield (not a problem since the wipers are already wiping the exorbitant amount off from the windshield washer nozzles already), the sunroof, and the trunk as well. So it like having a mini car wash at the pull of a lever.
The interior lighting is well done, as you would expect from Audi. One thing I love on cars is the ability to shut the over head lights off for when you get in and out. Since I work at night, I prefer to get in and out and not be lit up so everyone can see me, and the switch at the dome light makes this possible. Also the sides of the doors have red warning lamps and white ground lighting for nighttime. The foot wells have LED illumination that is not overbearing, just enough to see whats down there when turned on.
The seats are very well bolstered and the nicest feature is the pull out thigh support. I’m a taller guy and I like to have that extra support and this is the first car I have had that does this. And I really commend Audi for the seat extenders, as they help me banged up knees stay more comfortable as I drive it.
The steering w/o the the customizable driver setting has an ok feel to it. While at parking lot speed the amount of power assist is nicely proportioned. however when you start getting above 20MPH it gets rather heavy for that slow of a speed. Almost too heavy for when you are going to turn off a road of say 45MPH onto a side road. For someone with not a lot of upper body or arm strength you may need to use both hands as one handed turns in these cases can be difficult.
The HID headlamps are not the typical projector pattern. Usually the projectors on my old ’04 GTO (feel free to read that review as well) and my wife’s ’05 Acura TL always had a very distinct cut off of where the light was and was not. Usually making it hard to see when you started up a hill or going around bends. The S5 is more akin to a vertex setup. It still has the cut off line, but it much more blended at the edges and not so sharp.
The LED tail lamps (which are new for ’10) are one of the reasons that I picked a new ’10 instead of a ’09. The only things that I didn’t like for the ’10 model year is that they have changed the options packaging. Now you must choose, premium plus or prestige packages. Before you had things like the technology package which is what I really wanted (the keyless start, backup camera, memory seats) Unfortunately, NOW you have to buy the $5700 prestige package to get that stuff plus a bunch of junk I didn’t want. So I bought a premium plus instead. I did this because I didn’t want to spend another $5700 on top of the $56K (after tax and tags. . .) I already spent, AND because I don’t want to pay to fix the stuff when the warranty runs out.
I would however say that if you are going to buy an S5, you must buy the B&O stereo. I didn’t and I wish I had. Not that the Audi concert stereo is bad, I would have just liked the GALA system to work better and with the B&O system it is microphone based and not vehicle speed based, so it would adjust for ambient noise much better. Also if you spring for the navigation $2500 option, you will also have the audio controls moved down to the center console in front of the armrest. Another VERY handy place to have it. As if you do not have it there the controls for the audio system (and just about everything else for the car) will be in the traditional location. And as you would find out, you will tend to rest you forarm on the shifter lever (whether steptronic or manual) and will end up bumping into neutral on many occasions and you fiddle and play with the stereo, vehicle settings, phone setup . . .
Another thing I found fascinating was that everything, and I do mean everything is done through the MMI system. Even checking the oil is done in the computer. There is no engine oil dipstick. The computer tells you how much oil there is, when it is due to be changed and when the next oil change/service is due after that next service as well.
If you want to pull your wipers off the windshield for an impending snow/ice storm, you have to turn the car on, pull up the vehicle setting menu, go into wiper maintenance, and then set the wipers to the maintenance “on” position. Then they will motor half way up the windshield so you can pull them off. Just make sure you put them back down before you turn it off, or they will do some serious damage to the paint on your hood as they sweep back down under the hood. (They do stay in the up in maint. position until you turn it to off. Just tried it out after the impending freezing rain & ice storm moved through eastern PA and I am going to attempt to get home in it.
I bought my S5 with the steptronic automatic, but before you start railing for buying a sportscar with an automatic and not a manual transmission, just keep in mind that I banged up my knees pretty bad in a vehicle crash back in March of this year and it was still on the painful side to keep to keep using a clutch. So, yes I had to make the car a little on the girly side (no offense intended ladies) because of this. But on the upside, I do get 16city/24hwy instead of 14 city/21hwy. I have just about 250 miles on the odometer right now and before I attempted to bed-in the brakes on my way into work last night, I was averaging 22.4MPG. After I bedded the brakes, I dropped to 17.8MPG. But that is because of the quick accelerations and decelerations from 60MPH-5MPH at least 10 times on three occasions (plus a few extra because it was so cold).
The trunk is huge and shouldn’t have any problem swallowing any luggage for trips. The trunk lid is able to swing to the full open position w/o assistance, but can be a little harder to close than normal because of the spring tension. Also the battery is located under the donut spare tire along with the tool kit. One nice feature of the spare tire floor flap, is that when you pull up the flap to access the tire there is a little hook that pops up and grabs the trunk frame so it stays open while you are diddling around inside.
There were two main reasons I went with this car. The first was that I wanted a sports car with a V8 engine (preferable) and AWD was a bonus (but not a requirement). So basically I was looking at several AWD luxury cars, and the BMY 335xdrive, but the Audi, just fit with what I wanted the best. Plus starting in September 2010, the V8 will no longer be offered in the S5. It will be produced with the supercharged V6 that they have in the S5 cabrio and the S4s currently. So if you want a V8 S5 buy it before September.
The second reason I wanted this car was it looks cool. Quite franky. One additional benefit of buying it now was the New car tax incentive. That’s the one where you buy a new car between Feb. ’09 to Jan 1 ’10, you can take the sales tax as a tax deduction up to the first $49500 of the price. So I will get to take a nice $2975 credit for this.
The ride of the car is alittle on the hard side as you can tell since it is an "S" after all, but it still falls well into the luxury area of sports car. Plus matched to a set of Dunlop Sport Maxx GTs (255/35-19s). The road noise is not overly loud as the cabin is well insulated. when you activate the horn it sound a little on the quiet side, but thats only because of the insulation. The exhaust does drone at highway speed, but since it is a nice burbly V8 drone it is acceptable, but may annoy some who prefer a quiet Grand Tourer. I guess the S5 falls somewhere between a GT and a sports car, not quite fully one, but not fully the other either.
so as of now you can see there are many good points for this car, but there are some things which I just find annoying and needed to bring to a potential buyers attention.
Well that’s all I can think of for right now. I am sure in the following few months, I will add more as I find things I like, dislike and would like to make note of. Stay tuned.
Ok this was a fast update. On the way home in the freezing rain/sleet/sloppiness, I have concluded what everyone pretty much knew, the Dunlop summer tires are pretty much useless in that kind of stuff, but I didn't have any other choice but to drive in it to get home.
Just found two spots where the clear coat is starting to blister on the front bumper. So I guess it will be going back in to the shop next week when the weather improves. So much for the high quality paint. Apparently the clear coat has now gone to an "environmentally friendly" water base, and it has made it horrible for wear. I already have two nice size stone chips in the bumper and hood area. I will be adding a 3M clear bra to the vehicle after they fix the bumper.
So far I am very displeased with the paint quality and unfortunately it is costing this car 1 star.
I have noticed that the brakes squeal awfully loud and badly. I have read in the Audiworld forums that it is because the S models come with high performance brakes and they need to be bedded-in before that will go away. Not that it won't go away later w/ normal wear, but if you bed the brake properly it will enhance the rotor and pad life, and help the braking ability of the car. See the links for the theory and procedures for doing this below:
http://www.stoptech.com/tech_info/wp_bedinstock.shtml
I tried to do this last night on my way into work and I had to add a few extra stops into the mix, because it didn’t feel like they were heating up enough and I wasn’t getting a smell or any smoke. Probably because it was 24’F when I was doing it. But we will see if helped or not. I’ll keep it updated as the car wear sin more.
The other things that I will bring up here is that the car has to go back into the dealer to have the passenger side door handle fixed/repainted. This is because someone seemingly broke a small section of paint away down to the black plastic underneath on its way over from Germany. So hopefully they don’t have to pull apart the entire door and make a mess of it, since we all know once something comes apart it never goes back together correctly.
So now how about some positives. First the steering wheels is a very nice size and thickness. Plus it has several area around it where the thickness varies and makes for a very nice drive. It is not like the TT’s wheel that flattens out on the bottom and makes it hard to let the wheel slip through your hands coming off a turn. The S5’s is round, but and the bumps are really not intrusive at all, just comfortable.
The wipers are a point of contention for me. I like intermittant wipers that stay where I put the speed level at. I hate rain sensing wipers. If I want to have the wipers on slow or fast, I would put them there. If I want it to be the slowest setting on the intermittant then THAT is where I want it. You may as well not even have an intermittant setting because the car does what it wants with the speed no matter how you it set. So I just keep it off and use the single wipe.
Along with the wipers I must address the winshield washers. You have six directed and heated nozzles. When you are going at least 35MPH the hit perfectly on the windshield, hwy speed (55+) they spray pretty low on the window, and when you are stopped, the two outer most are going to spray the car the to the right and the left respectively. Just hope its not a big steroid freak in a convertible you end up spraying. (Then again you should be able to easily leave hit at the light if he has a roid fit from being sprayed lol). Also the headlamps washer activate if you hold the windshield washers on for at least 2 seconds (yes it does waste alot of fluid on the windshield). and again, if you are stopped you are going to give your entire car a wash, from the head lamps the fluid will reflect up onto the hood, windshield (not a problem since the wipers are already wiping the exorbitant amount off from the windshield washer nozzles already), the sunroof, and the trunk as well. So it like having a mini car wash at the pull of a lever.
The interior lighting is well done, as you would expect from Audi. One thing I love on cars is the ability to shut the over head lights off for when you get in and out. Since I work at night, I prefer to get in and out and not be lit up so everyone can see me, and the switch at the dome light makes this possible. Also the sides of the doors have red warning lamps and white ground lighting for nighttime. The foot wells have LED illumination that is not overbearing, just enough to see whats down there when turned on.
The seats are very well bolstered and the nicest feature is the pull out thigh support. I’m a taller guy and I like to have that extra support and this is the first car I have had that does this. And I really commend Audi for the seat extenders, as they help me banged up knees stay more comfortable as I drive it.
The steering w/o the the customizable driver setting has an ok feel to it. While at parking lot speed the amount of power assist is nicely proportioned. however when you start getting above 20MPH it gets rather heavy for that slow of a speed. Almost too heavy for when you are going to turn off a road of say 45MPH onto a side road. For someone with not a lot of upper body or arm strength you may need to use both hands as one handed turns in these cases can be difficult.
The HID headlamps are not the typical projector pattern. Usually the projectors on my old ’04 GTO (feel free to read that review as well) and my wife’s ’05 Acura TL always had a very distinct cut off of where the light was and was not. Usually making it hard to see when you started up a hill or going around bends. The S5 is more akin to a vertex setup. It still has the cut off line, but it much more blended at the edges and not so sharp.
The LED tail lamps (which are new for ’10) are one of the reasons that I picked a new ’10 instead of a ’09. The only things that I didn’t like for the ’10 model year is that they have changed the options packaging. Now you must choose, premium plus or prestige packages. Before you had things like the technology package which is what I really wanted (the keyless start, backup camera, memory seats) Unfortunately, NOW you have to buy the $5700 prestige package to get that stuff plus a bunch of junk I didn’t want. So I bought a premium plus instead. I did this because I didn’t want to spend another $5700 on top of the $56K (after tax and tags. . .) I already spent, AND because I don’t want to pay to fix the stuff when the warranty runs out.
I would however say that if you are going to buy an S5, you must buy the B&O stereo. I didn’t and I wish I had. Not that the Audi concert stereo is bad, I would have just liked the GALA system to work better and with the B&O system it is microphone based and not vehicle speed based, so it would adjust for ambient noise much better. Also if you spring for the navigation $2500 option, you will also have the audio controls moved down to the center console in front of the armrest. Another VERY handy place to have it. As if you do not have it there the controls for the audio system (and just about everything else for the car) will be in the traditional location. And as you would find out, you will tend to rest you forarm on the shifter lever (whether steptronic or manual) and will end up bumping into neutral on many occasions and you fiddle and play with the stereo, vehicle settings, phone setup . . .
Another thing I found fascinating was that everything, and I do mean everything is done through the MMI system. Even checking the oil is done in the computer. There is no engine oil dipstick. The computer tells you how much oil there is, when it is due to be changed and when the next oil change/service is due after that next service as well.
If you want to pull your wipers off the windshield for an impending snow/ice storm, you have to turn the car on, pull up the vehicle setting menu, go into wiper maintenance, and then set the wipers to the maintenance “on” position. Then they will motor half way up the windshield so you can pull them off. Just make sure you put them back down before you turn it off, or they will do some serious damage to the paint on your hood as they sweep back down under the hood. (They do stay in the up in maint. position until you turn it to off. Just tried it out after the impending freezing rain & ice storm moved through eastern PA and I am going to attempt to get home in it.
I bought my S5 with the steptronic automatic, but before you start railing for buying a sportscar with an automatic and not a manual transmission, just keep in mind that I banged up my knees pretty bad in a vehicle crash back in March of this year and it was still on the painful side to keep to keep using a clutch. So, yes I had to make the car a little on the girly side (no offense intended ladies) because of this. But on the upside, I do get 16city/24hwy instead of 14 city/21hwy. I have just about 250 miles on the odometer right now and before I attempted to bed-in the brakes on my way into work last night, I was averaging 22.4MPG. After I bedded the brakes, I dropped to 17.8MPG. But that is because of the quick accelerations and decelerations from 60MPH-5MPH at least 10 times on three occasions (plus a few extra because it was so cold).
The trunk is huge and shouldn’t have any problem swallowing any luggage for trips. The trunk lid is able to swing to the full open position w/o assistance, but can be a little harder to close than normal because of the spring tension. Also the battery is located under the donut spare tire along with the tool kit. One nice feature of the spare tire floor flap, is that when you pull up the flap to access the tire there is a little hook that pops up and grabs the trunk frame so it stays open while you are diddling around inside.
There were two main reasons I went with this car. The first was that I wanted a sports car with a V8 engine (preferable) and AWD was a bonus (but not a requirement). So basically I was looking at several AWD luxury cars, and the BMY 335xdrive, but the Audi, just fit with what I wanted the best. Plus starting in September 2010, the V8 will no longer be offered in the S5. It will be produced with the supercharged V6 that they have in the S5 cabrio and the S4s currently. So if you want a V8 S5 buy it before September.
The second reason I wanted this car was it looks cool. Quite franky. One additional benefit of buying it now was the New car tax incentive. That’s the one where you buy a new car between Feb. ’09 to Jan 1 ’10, you can take the sales tax as a tax deduction up to the first $49500 of the price. So I will get to take a nice $2975 credit for this.
The ride of the car is alittle on the hard side as you can tell since it is an "S" after all, but it still falls well into the luxury area of sports car. Plus matched to a set of Dunlop Sport Maxx GTs (255/35-19s). The road noise is not overly loud as the cabin is well insulated. when you activate the horn it sound a little on the quiet side, but thats only because of the insulation. The exhaust does drone at highway speed, but since it is a nice burbly V8 drone it is acceptable, but may annoy some who prefer a quiet Grand Tourer. I guess the S5 falls somewhere between a GT and a sports car, not quite fully one, but not fully the other either.
so as of now you can see there are many good points for this car, but there are some things which I just find annoying and needed to bring to a potential buyers attention.
Well that’s all I can think of for right now. I am sure in the following few months, I will add more as I find things I like, dislike and would like to make note of. Stay tuned.
Ok this was a fast update. On the way home in the freezing rain/sleet/sloppiness, I have concluded what everyone pretty much knew, the Dunlop summer tires are pretty much useless in that kind of stuff, but I didn't have any other choice but to drive in it to get home.
Just found two spots where the clear coat is starting to blister on the front bumper. So I guess it will be going back in to the shop next week when the weather improves. So much for the high quality paint. Apparently the clear coat has now gone to an "environmentally friendly" water base, and it has made it horrible for wear. I already have two nice size stone chips in the bumper and hood area. I will be adding a 3M clear bra to the vehicle after they fix the bumper.
So far I am very displeased with the paint quality and unfortunately it is costing this car 1 star.
