'GEARBOX' A LETDOWN - GO FOR THE MANUAL

+ Click to Enlarge BEAUTY IN THE EYE OF EVERY BEHOLDER: The Audi A5 Cabriolet looks good from any angle.

November 19, 2009
By Jesse Adams

It didn't take long for Audi to extend its A5 range with a cabriolet - and just look at it. I wonder whether this shell wasn't intended as a ragtop from the start and the coupe just an interim formality.

OK, a car's appearance is subjective, and for me to pass judgement could be unfair to those not wearing rose-tinted spectacles like mine. In this case, though, I'll go so far as to call this car drop-dead gorgeous and if you disagree, you're simply wrong.

Does it go as good as it looks? I was keen to find out, especially as 2008's smooth-as-custard, V8, six-speed manual and all-wheel drive S5 coupé is one of my favourite drives.

Problem: This cabrio is powered by a much smaller engine, only its front wheels are driven, and through a continuously variable transmission.

That engine happens to be the 155kW unit you'll find in the new Golf GTI. It's a multi award-winning two-litre turbo and, while it's a completely different genre to that of the S5 Coupé's 4.2-litre V8, it works very well here.

Sure, it has an extra 262kg to lug around, but power delivery comes on strong and smooth and, despite this being the smallest capacity engine available for this car, I'm still happy to call it a performance vehicle.

Our Vbox test results showed a 7.8sec 0-100km/h run and the car did the quarter-mile in 15.8. Reasonable numbers, those, but if that's not enough lead for your pencil there's always the hotter S5 Cabriolet, albeit with a supercharged V6 instead of a V8.

Now, that CV transmission. Eish. What a let-down. It's called multitronic in Audispeak and this design dropped out of the research and development department before graduation day. Imagine pulling away with such hesitation between throttle input and movement that you wonder if it's possible for a mechanical device to suffer from narcolepsy.

It works OK once moving and shifts pretty quickly between its pseudo "gears" (CV transmissions don't use gears but this one has six pre-programmed ratios to offer the illusion) but falling asleep every time the car comes halts is intolerable.

You can fool the transmission into performing better from rest by left-foot braking (I don't recommend this) and I experimented with this technique while hooked up to the test equipment during performance testing.

A full second is cheatable if you preload the drivetrain by left-footing and that offers a pretty good idea of the kind of hesitation I'm talking about under normal circumstances. In other words, opt for the manual gearbox.

NO BULKY METAL PANELS

The fabric of the roof is of very high quality and lets through very little outside noise. It also folds very quickly because it's a fairly simple design, unlike some of these newfangled folding hardtops.

It took 15sec to open and 17 to close - and works at up to 50km/h; very handy for those sudden downpours we get in Johannesburg at this time of year. And, because there are no bulky steel panels, it takes up very little boot space.

Ride is as good as you'd expect from an Audi but the (optional) larger alloys do too good a job of transmitting the ripples of the road surface to your backside. It's a phenomenon from which Audi seems to suffer more than do its German rivals but, in my opinion, the attractiveness of low-profile rubber outweighs its adverse effects.

Some (very minor) scuttle shake is also evident; rough roads had the windscreen frame jiggling slightly but modern development has almost eliminated chassis flex caused by the lack of a roof. - INL Motoring.

VERDICT

A simply stunning convertible with a fantastic engine, good ride but severely flawed transmission. Again, get the manual box. It's much cheaper, too.