Autoblog

The Caddy wins by default.

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great, insightful comment. really making a valid point there...

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I love the sarcasm... although you cant say anything agains my and BigMcLargeHuge comments. Do you want to know why? I think it's because they are true. Seriously, a petrol engine that cannot pass emissions standards and keep it's power is kinda silly... and even with all it's "power" it can't outrun the competition. Besides that Audi wouldn't have such a high-tech engine if it wasn't for Lambo anyway.

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Naturally any car that burns so much fuel its illegal is going to go fast. Audi missed that little balance point.

Don't get me wrong, I fully anticipated Audi to win a lot of comparison tests in US magazines.

But team that shows up on game day FTW.

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Scared? Hardly... it's just a business decision. The high costs of making a high performance vehicle meet emissions regulations along with the strong Euro just makes no sense.

Good to hear they want to up the RS brand though, and make the S the equivalent of M and AMG models. The prices for the rest of their models compared to the competition shows that is their intention.

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Serge, the engine in my RS4 was co-developed with Honda F1. It makes 420hp out of 4.2L and revs to 8300rpm. It runs on pump 91 octane. It may not like it, but it never pings or throws a CEL. The RS4 also won World Car of the Year last year beating out cars like the 911 Turbo. None of any of that had anything to do with Lambo. You don't think that's a good engine?

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Quote from Matt: -
"Serge, the engine in my RS4 was co-developed with Honda F1. It makes 420hp out of 4.2L and revs to 8300rpm. .............................None of any of that had anything to do with Lambo. You don't think that's a good engine?" -

Umm, you do know that the engine in the RS6 isn't the 4.2L V-8 in the RS4 right??

The RS6 does indeed share its V-10 with Lambo, it's just a twin-turbo version of it. Albeit it is updated a fair amount and brought down to 5.0L.

Sucks, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. We never got the original RS4, we barely got the last RS6, why shouldn't that tradition carry on? I was never expecting the Avant, but I figured the sedan would make a nice substitute.

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Hey Montoym,

I was merely pointing out that Audi has respectable and 'high-tech' engines in it arsenal besides those derived from lambo platforms. By the way, if you compare the three V10s they are actually quite dramatically different in design, as the lambo is designed for high rpms, the n/a Audi V10 is designed for more mid-ranged torque, and the TFSI enjoys the best of both worlds.

Apologies if my points were unclear in reference to the V8 comment.

-Matt

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I dont think the 420hp 4.2L V8 Audi makes is all that... by all accounts its a good modern high tech engine, but 317lb-ft torque at over 5,000RPM is just horrible. It's not even that it's not really alot, but it come it way too late. I'm not an anti-German guy, I love BMWs. As a matter of fact I love the engine in the M3... makes almost the same power from 4.0L without DI and has over 80% of torque at 2,000RPM and revs further thean the Audi engine. Besides the BMW engine has way cooler tech, like the silicon lined sleeveless cylinder banks :)

The RS4 has like 60-40% F-R weight transfer, compared to nearly 50-50% on the M3, M5, E63 and CTS-V.

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The Audi engine has 90% of it's max torque available from 2000-7000rpm. It also has a broader powerband then the M3 enginge.

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The weight dist is 56/44 and not even the great Jeremy Clarkson had much to say about the front weight bias when driving the car.

Here's a dyno comparing the RS4 and R8 engines, which are almost exactly the same except for their air intake and oil lubrication systems (wet vs dry sump)

http://www.automobilemag.com/features/0704_audi_r8_rs4_dyno_test/photo_03.html

Also, note that in many tests the RS4 is faster to 60 and the 1/4 than the new M3, so don't get too high on your horse about how tractable the M3 engine is - it's even more lofty then the RS (albeit equally as brilliant).

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Quote from Serge: -
"by all accounts its a good modern high tech engine, but 317lb-ft torque at over 5,000RPM is just horrible." -

Yeah, the 295lb-ft max at 3900RPM in the M3 is a huge step forward.

You failed to back up your assertion with actual numbers and I think we all know why.

The unfortunate nature of a high revving engine is a loss of torque. Any N/A high-revving engine(8K RPM or greater) I can think of has much less torque than its HP figure would suggest.

It all makes sense though since Torque is a function of HP and RPM. The actual equation is Tq = (HP x 5252)/RPM. As you can see, with higher RPMs, the torque number will be lower due to RPM being in the denominator. Since any high-revving engine I can think of makes its peak HP at those higher RPMs(otherwise what is the point?), their torque figures are going to be low compared to the HP figure. It's also the same reason(though opposite) that diesel vehicles tend to have very high torque figures compared to the HP numbers. Also explains why engines that make their peak power at middle RPMs also tend to have similar torque figures that are also made around those middle RPMs.

Granted, it's not all about the numbers and calculations, but they do play a role and tell an interesting story. Plus, the HP -> Torque calculation does only give the figures at a specific RPM as well. This is why a dyno sheet and "area under the curve" comes into play.

In a strange twist of fate, at it's peak HP RPM, the RS4 engine is still making almost the same torque as the M3's max. The M3's max is 295lb-ft. At 7500RPM(the RS4's HP max), the RS4 makes 294lb-ft.

As a comparison, the M3 engine makes 2612lb-ft at its peak HP RPM(8300).

So, realistically, both engines seem to have fairly good powerbands, but the RS4 does indeed make more torque and also makes it farther into the RPM range than the M3. In that case, I'll agree with Matt, both are equally brilliant, but the RS4 engine does seem to be the better one), at least on paper.

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"As a comparison, the M3 engine makes 2612lb-ft at its peak HP RPM(8300)."

I hope that's a typo.

But I never said that the RS4 engine should have a torque curve of the LS7, that would be silly. I realize that high-rev engines dont have gobbles of torque. But I still think that the M3 engine being smaller and not using DI has an amazing power curve. Those 0.2L and DI add more torque than HP and widen the power band considerably... with that said you could say that those two things save the RS4 engine. I think that's the problem, companies rely on new technology to make otherwise, I wouldn't say bad, but defenately not as amazing as they seem with the tech engines better instead of doing it the "right" way and then adding new tech to make them better. Look at the Porsche GT3 engine... over 400HP from a NA 6 banger! Now when they add DI to that amazing engine it will be even better, but before they do they squeeze every ounce of power they could out of it.

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blog commenter’s need to realize that most armchair enthusiasts don't have $100,000+ to drop on Audi's sedan and that's entirely why they don't offer it here. Now, if people put their money where their mouth is, and weren't so accustomed to taking out a second to purchase a car, I'm sure Audi would expand their range of RS offerings.

I'm much more excited for the RS5, it'll handle better and be a lot more fun to drive. And we're actually getting it.

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