A5 Sportback is an Audi worth remembering

A menu of Mark Glover’s AutoGlo car reviews can be seen on the Business page of The Sacramento Bee’s website – www.sacbee.com/news/business/article4005306.html

Sacramento, California – Is it possible to have too many As?

If you’re talking report cards, no. If you’re talking about the number of A-leading, alphanumeric designations in Audi’s passenger car lineup, well …

If you’re keeping count, there are six of them, which I believe makes it difficult for the general public to sort them out.  Try this test on your friends: “Quick, name Audi’s signature passenger car.”

If you’re greeted with a prolonged, “uhhhh,” then the point is made.  The good news is that, in my view, the extensively reworked-for-2018 A5 just might be the one that stands out in the crowd.

My tester was the 2018 Audi A5 Sportback 2.0T Quattro S tronic, and yes, that’s way too much to remember.  The simple translation is that my ride was a sporty five-seater with Audi’s quattro all-wheel-drive system and a seven-speed S tronic transmission.

We’ll just call it an A5 from here on out.

Besides sleek, elegant looks that radiated luxury and class, my A5 had the full boat of strong performance, excellent handling, exceptional state-of-the-art safety features and a generous list of standard comfort/convenience perks.

You might expect to pay around $65,000 for all of this, yet the bottom line on the tester’s sticker was a mere $52,100, and that was with extensive extras. The starting price was a remarkably reasonable $42,600.

So right away, I’m impressed.

On the fly, the 2-liter turbo-4 engine with 252 horsepower was an enthusiastic, but quiet workhorse.  When asked, it instantly sprinted away from surrounding cars.  I tried to make the suspension wiggle in exaggerated slalom runs, but the A5 was not having it.  It was rock-solid in all conditions.

Because of its configuration, the A5 Sportback can take on 35 cubic feet of cargo when the appropriate seats are folded. That will haul a few toothpicks.

And while I was enjoying the numerous options – a super-sophisticated navigation system, 3D sound and high-gloss, dark brown walnut inlays among them – I was impressed with the modern, stylish layout of the dashboard.

The cherry on top: pretty good fuel mileage at 24 miles per gallon in the city and 34 mpg on the highway.

All told, this was an Audi I won’t soon forget … for all the right reasons.