Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. News

Audi mulls a more practical RS5 – and a minivan?

Nick Jaynes
By

RS52 Audi is quickly climbing the luxury ladder, becoming the second best-selling luxury automaker in the world. Despite its heavy-hitting lineup, it still has a few models missing, including a shooting brake (a type of two-door wagon) and a minivan.

While we’re not crying in our beer over a missed Audi minivan opportunity, we are, however, quite sad the all-wheel drive obsessed German automaker has yet to build a shooting brake.

Recommended Videos

What might it look like? Car mad digital artist Garrett Bradford rendered these two images based on current sedan designs.

Related

Audi recently unveiled the new RS 5, which is based upon the same platform as the RS 4, which itself has a wagon variant. So it stands to reason that the automaker has the chassis architecture at hand to make an RS 5 shooting brake.

As we imagine it, Audi would do away with the virtually ancient normally aspirated 4.2-liter V8 in the current RS 5 and replace it with its latest TFSI 4.0-liter V8, which produces 520 horsepower and 479 pound-feet of torque.

Admittedly, wagons don’t sell very well here in the States so it might be a bit of a push. Recently, Audi unveiled its RS 6 Avant and excluded the U.S. from its sales markets. We hope they’d make an exception for an RS 5 shooting brake.

RS51
Image used with permission by copyright holder

As for the question of whether Audi might ever build a minivan: “I think yes. I would exclude boxy body styling, a real people mover though. It would need to be stylish and present the values of the company,” said Audi technical chief Wolfgang Durheimer when speaking to Autocar last week.

Where an Audi minivan might actually sell quite well globally, a limited-run RS 5 shooting brake could garner the German brand with more notoriety, which bolsters sales of its lower-end vehicles.

Here’s to hoping.

Editors' Recommendations

Nick Jaynes
Nick Jaynes
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Nick Jaynes is the Automotive Editor for Digital Trends. He developed a passion for writing about cars working his way…
The 2020 Audi A5 gets some style tweaks and a new infotainment system
Audi A5 Coupé

 

The 2020 Audi A5 gets a handful of changes for the new model year, including some tweaks to the exterior styling and a new infotainment system. Some new powertrains are also available in Europe, but those may not carry over to the United States.

Read more
Microeconomics and a little magic help bring the 2020 Audi RS 6 Avant to U.S.
2020 audi rs 6 coming to the united states with 600 horsepower avant 1

Previous

Next

Read more
Should you buy a used EV? Maybe, but it’s complicated
2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited AWD rear end side profile from driver's side with trees and a metal fence in the back.

Electric cars are slowly but surely getting cheaper. Over the past year or so, Ford and Tesla have been discounting their most popular electric cars while other brands, like Rivian, are laying the groundwork for all-new cheaper models.

But you'd still be hard-pressed to call electric cars cheap, and buying a completely new car in the first place is a hurdle in and of itself for many potential buyers. According to Statista, used car sales represented around 74% of all car sales in 2022, and while this figure is likely to change as electric cars get cheaper, the fact remains that most car buyers would prefer to save cash and buy used rather than buy something new.
Buying a new car ain't what it used to be
Buying a car with an electric powertrain doesn't necessarily need to be all that different from buying an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle. But there's a little more to it than that.

Read more