Audi RS 4 Avant

While the Audi RS 4 Avant shares its entire cabin layout with the A4 sedan, Audi has managed to rope in a sea of visual enhancements to make it look more special and justify the RS badge it comes with. The car has an all-black treatment to its cabin, but the contrast red stitching on the door panels, seats and steering wheel, and dashboard add to the tasteful experience on the inside.

Apart from the expected features like a full-TFT Audi Virtual Cockpit for the instrument console and a large touchscreen infotainment system with Audi MMI dial, the Audi RS 4 Avant gets black Nappa leather upholstery, with the seats getting a honeycomb pattern in crescendo red. The flat bottom sport contour leather steering wheel gets multifunction plus controls, to make sure everything has easy access on your fingertips. The rear seats have immense space and the 40:20:40 folding arrangement makes the already cavernous boot space even larger. The sense of space is further enhanced by the panoramic sunroof above.

The Audi RS 4 Avant is one special vehicle in the category of station wagons. Usually, a station wagon has always been perceived to be only family-oriented and functional vehicles with added cabin space over a regular sedan. However, Audi has instilled a dose of thrill and enthusiasm by making it look sporty with various design highlights.

The front face of the Audi RS 4 Avant is the same as that of the regular Audi A4 sedan. The car comes with sleek and angular headlamps, which have full LED treatment and get small air vents on their outer edges. In the middle of the front fascia sits the huge trapezoidal grille, which is finished in gloss black and gets honeycomb inserts within it. The big fog lamp housings have also been styled sharply, with vertical channels for air passage integrated into them.

The side profile of the Audi RS 4 Avant has a low slung stance, with the nicely executed length and design making it substantially look different from the Audi A4 sedan on which it is based. From no angle it looks disproportionate or a deliberate attempt of making a station wagon – it has a seamless design of its own. There is a crisp crease that runs all the way from the edge of the headlamp to that of the tail lamp. The five-spoke machined alloy wheels and black finish to the rearview mirrors add to the sporty appeal of the car.

At the back, the Audi RS 4 Avant has got a different-looking raked windscreen as compared to the A4 sedan. However, it shares its horizontally stretched tail lamps with beak-shaped inner edges from the sedan version. The rear diffuser with large dual rounded exhaust ports finished in the black rounds up the sporty appearance of the Audi RS 4 Avant from the back.

Being an RS model from Audi, the Audi RS 4 Avant is bestowed with features like Quattro all-wheel drive with the sport differential, dynamic steering, Audi Drive Select dynamic handling system, and RS sport suspension with Dynamic Ride Control. All these bits make the overall driving dynamics sharp and precise, despite the added bulk of a station wagon. While the car comes with an RS brake system with red brake calipers as standard, one can opt for a more special RS ceramic brake system with caliper color options of anthracite grey, blue or red.

The Audi RS 4 Avant is powered by the same 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol engine, which powers the bigger Audi RS 5 Sportback as well. Here, in the Audi RS 4 Avant, the engine is paired to an 8-speed automatic gearbox and pumps out 450 bhp of maximum power and 600 Nm of maximum torque. The car is capable of hitting 100 kmph from a standstill in 4.1 seconds, making it one of the quickest station wagons on sale in the Philippines.

The Audi RS 4 Avant is packed with premium safety features too, getting all prominent advanced driver assistance systems like adaptive cruise control, lane change assist, blind-spot monitoring system, autonomous braking, lane keep assist, and more. Apart from that, the regular list of features like eight airbags, ABS with EBD and brake assist, hill start assist, hill descent control, vehicle stability control, traction control, and more is also there.

The Audi RS 4 Avant is quite a looker and hoot to drive for a station wagon, which makes it feel more special. While it gets all the essential sporty elements of a typical RS badge, the fact that it doesn’t compromise on practicality with a spacious and feature-rich cabin makes it a perfect family car with sporty intentions