STEVE COLQUHOUN – 2010 Audi RS5.

Thanks to an angry volcano, I’m part of an extremely exclusive group to have driven Audi’s newest performance hero, the RS5.

The car’s international launch was disrupted by the huge cloud of volcanic ash creeping across continental Europe.  Most of the journalists who actually made it to the launch scrambled to get home by whatever means at their disposal. Hundreds more, due to fly in from around the world, phoned in their apologies.

That left a select group to sample some V8 magic at full, glorious noise around the Ascari racetrack in the Spanish coastal hinterland.

First impressions are that it’s a lively little bugger, to use the technical terminology. It needs to be, though, with the likes of BMW’s mighty M3 coupe and the brutally powerful Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG sedan in its cross-hairs.

It’s off to a flying start under the bonnet, having nicked the brilliant 4.2-litre, naturally aspirated V8 engine from the Audi R8. For the RS5, Audi tickled out an extra 22kW to bring power to a mighty 331kW that’s available just shy of its stratospheric 8500rpm redline. Torque is unchanged but more than adequate at 430Nm from 4000 to 6000rpm.

Audi concedes forced induction is the way of the future because of the outstanding power-to-economy ratio of turbocharged engines, but took the traditional path with the RS5 and it’s a better car for it.

Acceleration is immediate, swift and linear, dispatching the 0-100km/h sprint in 4.6 seconds, and largely without guilt. A combined fuel consumption figure of 10.8 litres per 100km is outstanding for a V8-powered sports car, and undercuts its less-powerful R8 brother by a sizeable 2.3L/100km.

It’s teamed exclusively to a seven-speed dual clutch auto. This style of gearbox in other cars can tend to feel a bit busy, thunking up and down the box endlessly in suburban stop-start driving in the quest for fuel economy. Not so the intuitive RS5 unit, called S Tronic, that’s freakishly good at understanding your driving style and predicting what you’ll do next.

There’s always the steering wheel-mount paddle shifters if you’re the DIY type, and shift patterns can further be tuned to comfort (soft), dynamic (sporty), auto (variable) or individually tailored specifications. Dynamic mode is particularly aurally satisfying, allowing the engine to rev all the way around to its limit with a banshee howl, and greeting downshifts with a delightful crackle.

Audi has worked on the steering, and it’s indisputably more precise, responsive and confidence-inspiring than the A5 coupe on which the RS5 is based.

The RS5 joins a select few Audi performance models to bear the “RS” moniker, which loosely translates to stand for “racing sport”. To boost its track credentials Audi has developed a launch control system – stomp both the accelerator and the brake pedal simultaneously and when the car holds the tacho needle at 5500rpm, step off the brake for a perfect traction-controlled launch.

A racing-style spoiler recessed into the boot-lid is automatically raised at 120km/h and stows again when speed drops below 80km/h.

The piece de resistance, though, is an Audi-developed self-locking crown gear differential that works with the “quattro” all-wheel-drive system to hold a 60:40 rear-front split until traction is lost, when it can send up to 85 per cent of power to the rear wheels or 70 per cent to the front.

There’s also a torque vectoring system that detects when an unloaded inside wheel is about to break into wheelspin and gently applies an individual brake . The result is a confidence-boosting all-paw safety net that’s usually several steps ahead of you in arresting any loss of traction.

It comes with a penalty when compared to its BMW and Benz rivals, though, with the added weight of the all-wheel-drive system blunting a little bit of the RS5’s impressive power delivery.

Other minor niggles are a back seats that is so cramped it is almost uninhabitable, front seats you have to shift yourself on the base model, a mile-long options list and a sticker price that’s likely to be well north of $150,000 by the time it lands here later this year.