Audi mulls a more practical RS5 – and a minivan?

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.

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

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.

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