GARAGE

Audi S4

REPORT 4

£46,460 OTR/£58,280 as tested/£596pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

To find out if a diesel S4 is still an S4

DRIVER

Jack Rix

NOPE, NOT AN UNFORTUNATE INTERFACE BETWEEN THE S4 AND A climbing frame, but a rig involving multiple suckers, several kilometres of steel tubing and a drone with its wings clipped. Just the job when you want to stick a camera under the rear bumper of a very sideways replica DB5 stunt car. You can watch the results in our Greatest Bond Cars vid, online now, and it gives me great pleasure to reveal the unsung hero of the shoot.

The perfect rig car needs to be sympathetically sprung, fast enough to keep up, grip hard and not punish erratic manoeuvres. But most of all, it needs to not have £2,145 worth of matte grey paint that’s allergic to suction pads (hello AMG GT 63 4dr). The S4 ticked all the boxes.

It’s not a subtle art, playing chase car – you simply need to get the lens as close to the back of the car in front whatever it takes and without having an accident. Now, the S4 might not be particularly engaging to drive at speed, or sound exciting, but this fully risk-assessed exercise highlighted some things. This is a car that likes to grip however ham-fisted your driving, and it has no interest in punting you into a tree should you come in a little hot, or apply the brakes at entirely the wrong point in a corner… y’know to avoid hitting an Aston Martin worth more than your house.

It also showed that while laggy at eight tenths, the V6 diesel delivers monumental mid-range torque when you leave nothing on the table, use the paddles to keep the turbos on the boil and give it a good thrashing. Which raises the question: should you have to drive an ‘S’ badged Audi that hard to extract its potential? Shouldn’t a gentle squeeze of the throttle or a sequence of bends within the speed limit be enough to make you glad you didn’t go for the 1.4 TSI? I’ll leave that one for now. All I know is the S4 isn’t a heroic car, but it had a hero moment, and my heart’s grown