The All-Day Everyday Coupe

Audi's redesigned answer to the 4 series and C-Class Coupe.

- Mike Febbo

Quick: Name a midsize, four-seat German sport coupe. If you just said BMW 3 Series, that was once the obvious answer, but now that category-defining coupe wears 4 Series badges. Competing with the 4 Series are the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Lexus RC, and upcoming Infiniti Q60, The 2018 Audi A5 and the higher-performance S5 have been completely re-engineered to take the four-seat coupe to the next level in terms of dynamics, technology, and efficiency. 

Audi hosted the press launch for the first A5 in 2007 in Verona, Italy. The home of Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lovers was chosen to highlight the Italian-inspired styling and the emphasis on passion over pragmatism. The event was held in a country side art hotel packed with modern glass and chrome sculptures full of primary colors and paintings of Cirque du Soleil-like clowns.

For the 2018 A5 and S5, Audi hosted jour nalists in Porto, Portugal, at a hotel attached to a ceramics factory decorated in various shades of concrete with beige flourishes. Strange choice considering the new A5 is arguably even more stylish than the last, but regardless of whether you like the harder creases and sweeping lines more than the old car, the science says it is far more aerody namic; the slipperiest Euro-market version emerges from the wind tunnel with an impressive coefficient of drag of 0.25.