PROWLING the classifieds has long been an enjoyable way to pass the time - you often find yourself in dreamland scenarios where budgets aren’t a factor, so you pick the best in each sector and end up with a fleet of ten, just in case you fancy a blast in whatever takes your fancy.
I suppose that notion goes back to Harry Metcalfe's early YouTube days when he'd lovingly showcase his sensational garage. You'd be awestruck by his Pagani Zonda's other-worldly looks, but be even more impressed because its neighbour was a Renaultsport Clio 182 Trophy. The camera would pan to a Lancia Delta Intergrale, then to a Lamborghini Countach. There's something hugely cool about attainable cars sitting next to supercars and collections truly do showcase a person's taste, hence why they vary so much.
However, put your sensible-ish head on and you'll come to selecting the hardest of the lot: the perfect two-car garage.
Opting for a pair means it’s a difficult thing to whittle down. Supercar for weekends, hot hatch for the most? An Ariel Atom or Caterham-style car for sunny days, can-do-all fast estate for everything else? Set a budget, but then it becomes an even more complex, challenging task - try it and your heart will attempt to fool your brain into believing a V10 BMW M5 in estate guise is well worth a punt at £20,000, for example…
It’s not worth it, of course, because it’ll be a ruinous experience that’ll rupture a bank account and no doubt end up in a relationship breakdown owing to an engine rebuild, but you get the picture… classified hunting is your thing, scenarios fall by the wayside and it’s your piece of conjecture. Who cares what anyone else thinks?
Sure, your dream two-car garage will change on a daily basis, but there’s one car that’s always occupied my ‘daily commuter’ slot and that’s an Audi RS4. Whether it was the estate-only B5 from the late 90s, the V8-engined B7 of the mid-noughties (horrific convertible variant aside), the best-looking B8 that followed to the current B9, they’ve always represented the same thing to me: pace, poise, polish and practicality - the ultimate perfect package.
Even now, 25 years on from its birth, I’d still have one over a C63, an M3 or a Giulia Quadrifoglio - all cars which I adore, by the way - but there’s just something about an RS4.
Sure, motoring journalists will bleat on about an alleged lack of steering feel and the Quattro system not being as crisp as a rear-drive set-up from BMW, Mercedes or Alfa, but I couldn’t care one bit because they’ve had the stupidity to form much of their conclusion having ragged a two-tonne estate car around a track. It baffles my mind and to do such a thing completely misses the point of the RS4.
It’s one of those cars that’s so good at everything; a nine-out-of-ten in all areas. For me - a father-of-two whose children, despite being aged just six and two, manage to require a whole host of rubbish to clog up a boot - the RS4 is without question the only car anyone could ever need. It’s gorgeous to look at, its interior is pretty much perfect, front and rear leg space is plentiful, its four-wheel-drive aspect could never be deemed as a negative given it’ll be used in all conditions and the all-important boot is as cavernous as you’d expect.
In all-black, £84,600 ‘Competition’ spec - of which there are just 75 examples - it probably isn’t the way the motoring journos would have wanted. Their thirst for lighter, harder more powerful variants is seemingly an unquenchable one, so what Audi’s done is kind of a two-fingered salute to that baying mob. Peruse its spec sheet and not much has changed, actually: the 450bhp V6 is the same, it’s still hefty on the scales and aside from the switchable dampers which Joe Public would never alter, that’s about it, thank you very much.
Start it up and there’s a lovely V6 thrum. Select its feistiest mode - RS - and the optional sports exhaust sounds fantastic: it’s muscular, brilliantly characterful and you get the odd pop every now and then on the overrun if you’re using its paddles.
Fast Audis have regularly been criticised for being too dull, too clinical and lacking fun, but a spirited drive in an RS4 reveals some eye-opening traits. There’s genuine steering feel, a truly brilliant eight-speed gearbox and point-to-point pace that’s hard to explain. Its mass is disguised well, but that’s only thanks to Audi’s nous and how this car behaves; the brakes are phenomenal and the rate in which the RS4’s V6 piles on speed is alarming. Quattro does rob a degree of involvement, it’s true, but having that unerring stability and subsequent trust in a properly fast car is something that’s needed. In all conditions you have faith in the RS4, knowing full well it’ll be there for you come what may - it’s loyal, never once moans and is supreme in the way it devours a challenging road. Do that in anything but dry conditions in a Giulia and you’ll end up backwards.
As we’re talking about the daily driver in my dream two-car garage, it has to offer everything in all conditions, so if its rivals edge ahead in the involvement stakes because they’re a bit lairy, so be it.
Key to its brilliance is its size, because it just doesn’t feel that big when you’re pushing on. It is an estate car, but it never feels a leviathan like its bigger RS6 sibling. It’s at home on countryside roads, it eats up motorways but truly shines on fast, flowing stretches like the Pickering to Whitby road.
You can trust its brakes, you're in no doubt what the steering's up to, there’s feel, you revel in its handling and you're gobsmacked by the grip it conjures up. Each detail makes it a phenomenal companion on a tricky road yet, at the same time, your passengers are comfortable, the boot’s full and it’s chucking it down outside.
It’s not a typical, fast-but-predictable Audi. It’s so much more - it’s got a personality, it’s fun but most of all it’s a beguiling proposition for every occasion and that is essential in this scenario.
Now, back to the classifieds to search for the second car in the two-car line-up - the RS4 has cemented its place.
