2025 Audi A5 Avant Review: Business As Usual

This is the new Audi A5 Avant, and no, that’s not a typo. That name was part of Audi’s grand plan to badge EVs with even numbers and ICE cars with odd ones, a plan that lasted all of a year before it was ditched.

So, the A5 is no longer a two-door version of the A4; it effectively is the A4. The next A4 will be an EV, but it’ll be the only one of Audi’s core lineup of saloons and estates to be split like this. The two-door A5, meanwhile, is dead.

Still following? Good, because that’s really the only big change. We’ve already tried the punchy V6-powered S5, but swap ‘S’ for ‘A’ and things get a lot more sedate. Here, your choices are all 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinders, with a seven-speed dual-clutch auto as the sole gearbox option.

There’s a petrol in 148bhp and 201bhp flavours, but we’ve been driving the sole diesel offering – also 201bhp, and 295lb ft of torque. The powertrain’s topped off with a little 48v battery and a titchy electric motor that can fill in some gaps and provide some very mild regenerative braking. The diesel’s the only non-S version of the A5 currently available with Quattro, but unless you live somewhere that gets proper winters, we wouldn’t bother – it never exactly feels like it’s going to overwhelm the front wheels.

As diesels go, it’s a good ’un. It only ever gets the tiniest bit coarse and grumbly under hard acceleration and is mostly hushed, smooth and steady in its power delivery. Despite fairly promising figures – 0-62mph in 7.7 seconds and a 149mph top speed – it’s not exactly spritely. It rides a decent wave of torque like all diesels do, but we can only really describe the pace as ‘adequate’, and that’s just fine in a car like this.

Fine, that is, until you hoof it for an overtake, when the noticeably laggy throttle and a slightly slow-shifting gearbox can make things a bit hairier than you intended. You could solve this by switching to Dynamic mode, but should that really be necessary to overtake a Nissan Juke that’s going 42mph in a 60? Besides, changing drive modes is one of the many things made irritatingly fiddly by the A5’s interior. But more on that shortly.

The rest of the driving experience is par for the big diesel Audi course. No, you won’t be going very fast, but you will be enjoying that refined engine and the A5’s squishy ride. It really is a comfy car, eating up the worst that nasty British roads can throw at it, even with our car’s optional sports suspension sitting it 20mm lower.

That’s not to say it’s a total pudding in the corners. If you’re not being completely silly, it stays reasonably flat, and responds quickly enough to steering inputs. Bends on faster, flowier roads can be smoothly strung together if the mood takes you, but this – and the peculiarly heavy steering – shouldn’t trick you into thinking the A5 is some sort of sports car.

It’s at its best loping along, comfortably eating up miles, reliably getting MPG in the mid-to-high 40s. The gearbox isn’t the most responsive but it’s as smooth as you like, and the cabin is hushed and well-isolated from the outside world.

Unsurprisingly, we’ve got the same interior grumbles as we did with the S5. There are some surprisingly cheap-feeling plastics, most noticeable on the air vents and the glossy black stuff on the centre console. That’s a bit more acceptable here than it was on the S5, although our kitted-out Launch Edition car still came in at a chunky £58,125.

Most issues, though, arise from the fact that there are more screens than a branch of Vue, and none of them are particularly logically laid out. Prepare for lots of jabbing and swiping, especially if you’re mirroring your phone, because changing any settings will return you to the car’s main screen rather than CarPlay or Android Auto.

Still, it deserves credit for the shortcut button that takes you to five selectable ‘favourite’ ADAS settings and for otherwise being a quiet, comfy and posh-enough-feeling place to spend time. The B&O sound system is rather lovely, too.

This being the Avant, we must talk boot space. You can cram the diesel with 448 litres of stuff with the back seats up, and 1396 with them down. That’s a bit less than its chief rivals, the BMW 3 Series Touring, Mercedes C-Class Estate and Volvo V60. It’s also slightly less than the petrol-engined A5 Avant, for reasons we don’t really understand but assume relate to the diesel’s available Quattro gubbins. We’re being slightly picky, though – there’s still a lot of space back there.

A basic A5 Avant will cost you from £44,605 – a couple of grand less than a C-Class Estate, but slightly more than the 3 Series (which, admittedly, is due a replacement pretty soon). It also faces some internal competition from the VW Passat and Skoda Superb Estate – both of them cheaper spec-for-spec, bigger, and much closer than they used to be in terms of interior poshness. What they don’t have, though, is four rings on the front.

If a ‘premium’ badge is a must, it’s business as usual with the Audi despite the A5’s new name. The 3 Series will be nicer to drive, the C-Class a touch more luxurious, and the V60 more practical. As an all-round package, there’s much to commend the A5 on. Just as long as you can get to grips with that absolute wall of screens.