Pocket Rocket

Built low to the ground, compact and agile, the pricey Audi RS4 Avant is the Lionel Messi of the automobile world.

- Stephen Corby

THE TERM “low centre of gravity”, when applied to cars, can sound as nerdy as Elon Musk reading A Brief History of Time aloud, but it’s actually a simple enough concept, if you put it in football terms.

Because the fact is that one of the big reasons that tiny geniuses like Lionel Messi and Eden Hazard are so fascinatingly fabulous to watch is that they are both so low to the ground, with small but seemingly super-human legs (and gargantuan glutes).

This allows them to run past tall-timber players and change direction at speed in a way that would leave your typical AFL player with whiplash.

Obviously, diminutive super footballers are like sedans, coupes and the almost-forgotten station wagons, while AFL players, as magnificent and statuesque as they look, are the SUVs of the human world.

It stands to reason, then, that if you want to enjoy driving, to corner like you mean it and to avoid the top-heavy, tilting feeling of the soft roaders and slab-sided utes so many people seem attracted to these days, you need to buy something of a more traditional, low-slung shape.

If you’re a real enthusiast, yet one saddled with either family commitments or a love of surfboards, this leaves with you a choice of just one vehicle, in the increasingly unusual shape of Audi’s riotous RS4 Avant.

Yes, “Avant” roughly translates as “station wagon”, but that doesn’t mean it has a lot to do with the Falcon, Commodore and Magna wagons you used to carpool to footy training in as a child.