These two cars somehow manage to be both very different and very much alike. First of all, they're four-seat coupes from two-thirds of the German holy trinity of Audi, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, which automatically means they'll be competing against each other regardless of how similar or not they are otherwise.
And there are plenty of things that set them apart. For instance, while they share a six-cylinder engine architecture, one has them arranged in a line (obviously, the Bimmer), while the other's describe a V shape. They have roughly the same displacement (3.0-liter for the M4, 2.9-liter for the RS 5), but the Audi only gets 444 hp (450 PS) out of its powertrain, whereas the BMW, since it's an M4 Competition, betters that by quite a margin with its 503 hp (510 PS).
Even in non-Competition form, the Bavarian sporty model still has 473 hp (480 hp), so about 30 hp more than the Audi. But this is the top-dog Competition version that doubles the power gap between the two compared to the standard M4 offering, making it very hard to ignore in the process.
Not everything is stacked in the M4's favor, though. BMW made plenty of headlines when it decided to equip the M5 with the M xDrive all-wheel-drive system, but the initial uproar has since all but died out. Still, this all-new BMW M4 doesn't benefit (or suffer, depending on which side of the fence you are) from its presence, making the coupe pretty difficult to handle off the line under heavy acceleration.
On the other hand, the Audi naturally comes with the quattro system, making it much more adept at picking up speed effectively after launch with minimal or zero wheel spin. That bit is perfectly exemplified here where the RS 5 has no problem dispatching the Bimmer despite having a much inferior set of tires.
But if you thought the easy drag race win automatically makes the RS 5 the better car in this comparison, you couldn't be farther from the truth. BMW prides itself on making "ultimate driving machines," and a drag race isn't the best metric for that. A lap around a tight, technical track, on the other hand, provides a much better opportunity.
And, very unsurprisingly, that's where the M4 shines. Anyone who's ever sat in a BMW, particularly an M Performance one, knows how these cars communicate their potential to the driver even before the engine is switched on. It's the driving position, the hugging of the seats, the thick steering wheel. And then you fire up that straight-six, hit the throttle pedal, marvel at the sound, and turn into the first corner—before you know it, you feel one with the car in a way that very few other vehicles can reproduce.
Even with a bit of fooling around, the BMW has no problem beating the Audi RS 5 around the track almost just as convincingly as the Ingolstadt-made coupe won the standing quarter-mile drag race. Is any of these two results enough to declare one car better than the other? No, but based on what we've seen, we could very easily decide which of the two we'd like to take on an empty, twisty road that focuses on handling and driving dynamics. On the flip side, we would lose no time deciding which one to take drag racing either.
"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie) Full profile
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