Ferrari 812 vs Audi RS5

What's the difference?

Clearly, this is not a car for everyone, and you’d have to question whether it’s a car for anyone, really, but people who like spending $610,000 on Ferraris, and waiting in a queue to do so, will be delighted, because it delivers the kind of exclusivity, and bragging rights, that you’d have to hope a car called Superfast would.

Personally, it’s a little too much, a little too over the top and definitely too mad, but if rockets are your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

It's hard to look past the fact that the RS 5 Sportback is more than $50k more expensive than an S5 Sportback, which itself is hardly cheap. But is it the pick of the RS 4 and RS 5 family? Probably, but I’m personally still a sucker for the RS 4’s wagon shape

I also reckon it’s currently the pick of the three fast German options, and I love that you can get it in this bodystyle.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel and meals provided.

It’s very… big, isn’t it? And it looks even bigger in the flesh with a bonnet you could use to put a roof over your tennis court. In all, the Superfast is 4.6m long, almost 2.0m wide and weighs 1.5 tonnes, so it certainly has presence.

Making something this big look good is a challenge even for those as talented as Ferrari’s design team, but they have nailed it. The front has what appears to be a mouth, poised to swallow lesser cars whole like some whale shark Terminator. 

The bonnet appears to be flaring its nostrils, and looks fabulous from the driver’s seat, and the swooping side and taut rear complete things nicely.

Personally, it still just looks too big to be a Ferrari, but then this is not a mid-engined super car, it’s a grand touring rocket ship, and the ultimate expression of unnecessary excess, and it pulls off that aura perfectly.

From the B-pillar forward, the RS 5 Sportback is identical to the Coupe, with the same deep and aggressive front apron to set it aside from the lesser S5 and A5 models. The same applies at the rear, with a bespoke rear bumper with large oval exhaust outlets on either side.

It also scores the delightfully pumped wheelarches on each corner of its mechanical siblings, along with the same 20-inch wheels.

Like the coupe though, one detail that seems to be missing from the previous RS 5 is a significantly wider track. Compared with the S5 Sportback, the RS 5 Sportback’s track is just 11mm wider at the front and 20mm at the rear, so if you halve those figures per side they’re likely just from additional camber in the wheel alignment settings.

So those wheelarch blisters are largely for aesthetics, rather than a necessary adjustment to allow for a broader stance.

Enough of the comparisons though, the five-door liftback bodystyle gives it a uniquely sleek yet practical appearance, with all of the tasty performance cred of the coupe and wagon.

Also as I alluded before, BMW is unable to build you an M4 Gran Coupe, which would be its BMW equivalent, due to the regular Gran Coupe being built in a different factory to the 3 Series sedan and 4 Series coupe. And Mercedes-AMG’s C 63 bodystyle options are limited to sedan, coupe, wagon and convertible - there just isn’t a five-door liftback on the list.

The RS 5 Sportback’s interior is a continuation of the beautifully detailed coupe and wagon, with real carbon fibre, aluminium and leather tastefully applied leather that has a subtle edginess that really fits the Audi RS brand.

Practicality isn’t really your concern when you buy a two-seat mega car like this, so let’s just say it’s about as practical as you would expect it to be. Not very, then.

This is where it’s hard not to make Goldilocks analogies. Where the RS 5 coupe has a decent boot with a small, sedan-like opening and a back seat for two that’s difficult to access via the front doors, the RS 4 has a great wagon boot with a huge opening and a back seat for three that’s easy to access because it has back doors.

The RS 5 Sportback is closer to the latter, but sacrifices the cargo height of the wagon and the sloping roofline will mean that taller passengers may want for more headroom and easier access to the back seat. It does retain the wagon’s third seating position back there though, and neither back seat compromise is an issue for my 172cm height.

Its 480 Litres VDA seats-up boot capacity is a match for the S5 Sportback, which is only 25 litres short of the RS 4. Like the S5, a space saver spare sits beneath the boot floor.

The RS 5 Sportback also ticks important convenience boxes like dual cup holders front and rear, bottle holders in each door, decent oddments storage and auxiliary connections front and rear, plus ISOFIX child seat mounts for both outward rear seat positions.

If you’ve ever found yourself perusing Audi’s mid-size RS line-up and been disappointed by the lack of back doors in anything without a wagon body, the RS 5 Sportback is the solution.

Two door coupes are a pain to live with unless you have no need for the back seat, and I’m led to believe that there are some who aren’t enchanted by the RS 4 Avant’s epic cool factor.

If this is you, and your local freeway onramp isn’t long enough to suit the S5 Sportback’s 4.7s 0-100km/h claim, you’ll also be delighted to know that the RS 5 Sportback is priced at the same $157,700 (before on roads) as the RS 5 Coupe, and $4800 above the RS 4. You won’t be as delighted by the $51,900 premium over the S5 Sportback.

The standard equipment is a match also, with the Quattro sport rear differential, RS sports exhaust and 'Dynamic Ride Control' with adaptive dampers all on the list.

You’ll also find the black 'Fine Nappa' leather sports seats with diamond stitching, Bang & Olufsen 3D audio, LED headlights, gloss black exterior details, panoramic sunroof and red brake calipers.

The Audi virtual cockpit driver display also features, plus RS-specific tyre pressure, torque and g-force readouts and a shift light.

The RS 5 Sportback aligns with the MY19 RS 5 coupe spec upgrade, which brings a head-up display, wireless phone charger and USB outlets for rear passengers.

The RS 5-exclusive 'Sonoma Green' paint seen on the coupe is also now available on the Sportback for the same extra $1950 any colour aside from Nardo grey will add to the sticker price.

One detail you don’t get on the coupe is the auto liftback with gesture control, similar to the RS 4’s tailgate.

I did want to give the epic, enormous 6.5-litre naturally aspirated V12 engine a perfect 10 here, but when I paused to think about it I had to admit that it is, quite possibly, a little too powerful.

Yes, it is amazing to think Ferrari can build a car that has 588kW (800 horsepower - hence the 812 nomenclature; 800 horses and 12 cylinders) and doesn’t just dig itself a hole in the road as soon as you put your foot down.

And yes, it does provide the kind of performance that makes all other cars seems a bit piss poor and pathetic, even the really good ones. 

But honestly, who could ever use it all, or need it all? They might seem like irrelevant questions, I guess, because it’s all about conspicuous over-excess, a car like this, so really the question is, would anyone want to live with 588kW and 718Nm of torque, or is it just too scary in reality?

Well, a little bit, yes, but Ferrari’s engineers have been wise enough not to actually give you all of that power, all the time. Torque is limited in the first three gears, and maximum mental power is actually only available, in theory, at 8500rpm in seventh gear, at which point you’d be approaching its top speed of 340km/h.

The fact that you can rev an engine this big, and this lusciously loud, all the way to 8500rpm is, however, a joy that would never tire.

In more practical terms, you can run 0-100km/h in 2.9 seconds (although cheaper, less crazy cars can do that, too) or 200km/h in 7.9 (which is a tiny bit slower than the far lighter McLaren 720S).

What you can’t do, of course, is achieve any of those numbers on winter tyres, or roads with snow on them.

The RS 5 Sportback is a genuine mechanical match for the coupe and RS 4, which means the same and impressive 331kW/600Nm 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6 and delightfully adaptive eight-speed ZF torque converter auto.

Max power is available from 5700-6700rom, while peak torque is accessible all the way from 1900-5000rpm.

The Quattro all-wheel drive system retains it 60 per cent native torque bias for more of a rear-drive dynamic. 

Much as you can’t have a good volcano without some serious lava, you can’t have 800 horsepower without burning a lot of dead dinosaur goo. The Superfast has a claimed fuel-economy figure of 14.9L/100km, but on our drive the screen just said "Ha!" and we burned through a whole tank of fuel in less than 300km. 
Theoretical emissions are 340g/km of CO2.

Given the familiarity of the RS 5 Sportback’s mechanical package, there’s also no surprises with its fuel consumption.

The official combined fuel consumption figure is 8.9L/100km, which is 0.1 more than the coupe, and the same as the RS 4.

We managed a rare feat during our 350-plus kilometre drive taking the back way from Canberra to Goulburn, to Oberon, then to Bathurst via Lithgow, where we managed to match the official combined figure on the car’s trip computer.

While it’s a good rule of thumb that you can do this on a steady motorway cruise, it was mighty impressive to do it along the flowing country route with regular climbs and overtaking.

It is worth noting though that like all RS models, the RS 5 Sportback commands expensive 98 RON Premium unleaded as a minimum.

Insane. It’s a word that people often lift from their lexicon when describing a supercar experience, because clearly, as forms of transport, things like Ferraris and Lamborghinis are not sane options.

But the Superfast really deserves the word, because it feels not only the opposite of sane, but truly bonkers. As if someone built it for a dare, realised it was a bad and possibly dangerous idea, and then put it on sale anyway.

Picture some tiny-handed child with his greasy, post-cheeseburger fingers poised over a big red button on his desk that could wipe out humanity, and that’s basically the situation your right leg finds itself in when driving the Superfast.

There is so much power on tap here - even the limited amount of it that the engineers allow you to access in lower gears - that it truly seems possible you’ll have a Road Runner moment, and simply dig a hole in the ground, if you push the throttle too hard.

Yes, on the one hand, the noises this extreme V12 makes above 5000rpm are memorable and moving, like Satan himself singing Nessun Dorma in a shower of sparks. At one stage we found a long tunnel, perhaps the only dry road within 500km that day, and my colleague forgot all about his licence and let rip.

The numbers on my 'Passenger Screen' spun like poker-machine wheels, then turned red and then implausible. I was shoved back into my seat as if by Thor himself, and I squealed like a small pig, but my co-driver heard nothing over the Monaco tunnel during F1 sound.

Even on dry road, of course, the winter tyres we were forced (by law) to run in the foul snowy conditions could not maintain grip, and we constantly felt the rear skipping sideways. Fortunately we were in Italy, so people simply cheered us on.

The likelihood that you will lose traction in this car is so high that the boffins have included a special feature in its new 'Electronic Power Steering' system called 'Ferrari Power Oversteer'. When you inevitably start going sideways, the steering wheel will apply subtle torque to your hands, 'suggesting' the best way to get the car back in a straight line.

A proud engineer told me that this is basically like having a Ferrari test driver in the car with you, telling you what to do, and that they used their skills to calibrate the system. You can override it, of course, but it sounds scarily like an autonomous-driving precursor to me.

What’s disappointing about this car having EPS at all, rather than a traditional hydraulic system, is that it just doesn’t feel muscular enough for a hairy-handed monster of a car like this.

It is accurate and precise and pointy, of course, and makes driving the Superfast, even in stupidly slippery conditions, almost easy. Almost.

It’s actually surprising how hard you can push a car like this along a windy and wet mountain road without careering off into a muddy field.

More time, and more traction, would have been appreciated, but you can tell it’s the sort of car you’d grow into, and perhaps even feel in control of, after a decade or so together.

So it’s good, yes, and very fast, obviously, but I can’t get past the idea that it’s all a bit unnecessary, and that a 488 GTB is simply, in every single way, a better car.

But as a statement, or a collector’s item, the Ferrari 812 Superfast certainly is one for the history books.

There’s a good chance you’ve skipped straight to this point, and if you've driven the excellent RS 5 Coupe or the RS 4 you won’t find any surprises in the RS 5 Sportback. This is a very good thing.

Compared to its muscular looks, its general refinement around town is still a really nice surprise for a car of this performance calbre. It’s not hard to imagine driving your grandmother around in comfort. In fact, she would have been right at home on our 350-plus kilometre country cruise between Canberra and Bathurst. 

You might miss the V8 growl from an AMG, but the V6 does make a nice bark once you give it some decent throttle, and it delivers those 331kW and 600Nm very effectively through those two turbos. As I often find myself saying these days, this thing is so easy to drive so fast!

Its very impressive 3.9 second 0-100km/h claim feels entirely realistic, which matches the coupe and trumps the RS 4 by two tenths.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that the ZF eight speed torque converter auto feels right at home with the RS5, being smooth as around town, and as responsive and quick to shift as you’d ever want it to be when you’re getting up it.

Its overall refinement does mean it’s not quite as exciting to drive fast as the AMGs or BMW Ms, even with the controls and mechanicals tightened up in Dynamic mode.

Our best opportunity to put it through its performance paces was via the surprise set of bends hidden between Bathurst and Sofala, where it simply honked its way uphill. You instantly forget that it's a rather large five seater with almost room for a pony in the boot. There’s miles of grip, it steers really nicely and the big brakes do a really good job under pressure. This, is a proper RS.

While not specifically stated, the RS 5 Sportback should be covered by the same five-star ANCAP safety rating as the rest of the fixed-roof A5 family. Note that this rating was awarded based on older 2015 criteria though.

It matches the RS 5’s impressive list of standard safety features, which includes front city AEB with pedestrian detection.

Interestingly, the initial Sportbacks being delivered to Australia match the six airbag count of the coupe, which covers front and side airbags for the driver and passenger, along with curtain airbags covering the front and rear.

The second batch and all future RS 5 Sportback examples will match the eight airbag count of the wagon, which adds rear side airbags to the list above. If you’re about to place an order, I’d strongly recommend insisting on the eight airbag version that this score is based on.

Once you’ve paid the vast cost of entry, it’s nice to know you will get some stuff for free, like your first seven years of servicing, including all parts and labour, carried out by trained Ferrari technicians, who even dress like pit crew. It’s called 'Genuine Maintenance', and is genuinely Kia-challenging in its scope.

Like all Audis, the new RS 5 Sportback is covered by a three year, unlimited kilometre warranty. This is short of the five year-plus periods that now form the status quo among mainstream brands, but equal to the terms offered by BMW and Mercedes-Benz. Lexus differs by offering a four year, 100,000km plan. 

RS 5 Sportback service intervals are a generous 12 month/15,000km though. 

Another detail to be aware of is that RS models are still exempt from Audi’s Service Plan Pricing capped price servicing plan.