Just followed one of them v5 Golf's through town.

I remember a guy at work having one a few years back and I've never quite been able to figure out what particular hole in the market place they filled...

No more power or torque than the GTi as far as I remember but used more juice.

Or am I missing something?

 

Engine was slightly less dreadfully rough than the over-stretched long-stroke VW four.

But really, just Piëch's Pointless model Proliferation.

They now do a straight-five for US models, instead of the turbo four.

 

Wasn't it 4 wheel drive as well?

 

The same feeling was felt towards the Bora V5 when released. The sensible money was spent on the V6 4motion

 

IIRC, those were a really capable fast cruiser in a discrete package.

Until the sump bottomed out & the AA had to be called...

 

In the 70's and early 80's the Audi straight 5 was advertised as "having the smoothness and power of a six, with the economy of a four". It seems VAG have a history and fixation with 5's.

 

Having had a couple of Audi inline 5s, that was total nonsense too!

 

i think you need it to tax the car or something.

 

The "Audi" was originally a DKW that that a 3-cyl two-stroke hung out ahead of the front axle.

The 70 & 100, developed from it under M-B ownership originally (it was banned by VW, but Audi developed it in secret) had a four-cylinder four stroke in its place.

When the car became a success, a straight-six was developed for it out of the Golf's EA827 unit. Guess what? it had a stupidly long nose and handled like a greased pig. The Germans can be very dumb at times.

Anyway, the C2 Audi 100 got a pot sawn off that to become a five and was later turbo'd to become the 200.

The 6-banger lived on in the VW LT van & the Volvo 740D, where it regularly blew head gaskets.

Many diesels are straight-fives, because the lower RPM doesn't introduce high-rpm couples that would destroy the crank. Ostensibly MAN & M-B are proponents, but even Lancia's first truck Diesel was a (very elegant) straight-five.

 

Interesting.

I recently had a chat with my ex-Ingolstadt engineer neighbour about Audi's involvement with the MK1 Golf. The vehicle's platform, suspension and engine were apparently developed by a small team of only 25 or so at Audi, after the many 1000's at VW R&D failed to deliver the goods.

Even then VW would appear to have been sullied by the bean-counter mentality. Perversely the enormous (and presumably costly, even at that time) VW engineering division was no match for the very small (and much cheaper...), highly motivated Audi creative engineering team.