Although the Competition isn’t the lightest or the most powerful M5 out there, it still ticks all the right boxes in the mid-size premium sports sedan segment. The question is, can it hold its own against Ingolstadt’s finest?
Car Magazine has raced the Bavarian interloper against the Audi RS 6 Avant to satisfy this curiosity, but first, let’s crunch through some figures.
Over in the United States of America, the Competition Package adds $7,600 to the starting price of $103,500 excluding taxes. Fitted with 20” bi-color wheels, the go-faster option further includes 17 additional horsepower, extended gloss-black elements, black-chrome tailpipes, M Sport front seats, M stripes on the front seatbelts, as well as Merino leather upholstery.
Tipping the scales at 4,370 pounds (1,982 kilograms), the M5 Competition is rocking 617 force-fed ponies and 553 pound-feet (750 Nm) of torque from 1,800 revolutions per minute. Shifting is the duty of the good ol’ ZF 8HP, and obviously enough, M xDrive all-wheel drive is standard.
Representing the four-ringed automaker, the RS 6 Avant is a little more costly at $116,500 before any extras. Fitted with quattro all-wheel drive, the family-oriented sports wagon also happens to be quite a bit heavier at 4,982 pounds (2,260 kilograms). The engine bay is hiding a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 mill, which is 0.4 liters down on the Bimmer’s S63 powerplant.
Audi quotes 591 horsepower and 590 pound-feet (800 Nm) from 2,050 revolutions per minute for the North American spec, which puts the RS 6 Avant in the crosshairs of the less torquey but lighter M5 Competition.
The Audi doesn’t have a bonafide launch control function according to Car Magazine’s Ray Leathern, but that’s not quite accurate. The C8 needs to be in RS2 mode by clicking the RS button twice, then the brake and gas pedals have to be floored past the kick-down switch to activate launch control.
Given this information, it shouldn’t come as a surprise the M5 Competition digs in better off the starting line and keeps widening the gap to the RS 6 Avant as they approach and eventually cross over the quarter-mile line.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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