In the interests of full disclosure, here’s who we are: a marketing agency who represents the Leith network of car dealerships. Audi Cary is one such dealer, hence how we got this 2016 Audi A5 Cabriolet for a few hours.
That out of the way, here’s how it worked: we called up and said we wanted to take a convertible out since spring finally arrived in North Carolina and people might be thinking more about driving for pleasure instead of just to get from indoor place to indoor place. Audi Cary said sure and gave us the keys.
Here’s what we drove: Our 2016 Audi A5 Cabriolet had a Moonlight Blue metallic exterior, Velvet Beige and Moor Brown interior, 2-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, Premium Plus package, and Technology package. You can look up its exact specs at its vehicle description page.
In our capacity as a marketing agency, we drive cars across all of Leith’s dealerships so we have a pretty good idea of what every brand offers. We drive Mitsubishis, Hondas, BMWs, Nissans, Maseratis, Rolls-Royces and everything in between. Every brand has strengths, and we try to illustrate those in our blog posts so that you get an idea of what each brand does well. You’re the one deciding what to buy, so our role is to provide some information in case you don’t have time to do the test drive yourself.
Anyway, back to the point of this article—the Audi. We’ll admit, we have a pretty plum job getting to drive new cars for a living. It’s not every day that we get to take off in the middle of the morning and sit behind the wheel of a new car instead of typing away at our desk, but it happens often enough and we get that it’s a privilege.
In this case, the Audi had plenty of things it did well. Its motorized top opens and closes with decisiveness and hardly any noise, which made us feel confident in its mechanics (no one likes the idea of having to repair a broken convertible top). The top itself had perforated leather on the inside which made it look both pleasing and luxurious, thus making us notice how well it stopped noise from coming through.
However, the real joy of the car was driving with the top down, so that’s what we did. With the top down, driving was a delight, particularly when we found some long roads in Holly Springs with few stoplights or stop signs. The road wound and curved, which let the wind woosh inside the cabin and the sun’s fingertips to warm the top of our head and arms.
Also pleasant was the car’s Bang & Olufsen sound system, which came with the Premium Plus package we mentioned above. Music from a quality stereo system adds so much to the experience of driving a convertible, much as a quality soundtrack adds a lot to a movie. We tried driving in quiet for a bit, the better to hear the engine, but it made the experience a bit too lonesome. Although some purists will say that the exhaust note is all you need, we found our time to be much happier with music from our phone thanks to the car’s Bluetooth wireless.
A lot of the above could arguably be applied to any convertible—though we would argue that no two brands execute on these concepts in quite the same way—so let us point out a few other things that the Audi A5 convertible does exceptionally well.
The wood grain in the interior, particularly around the shifter and in the doors, had polish without losing its natural feeling of woodenness, which is a wordy way of saying that it actually felt like wood, and high-end wood at that. Many automakers include wooden bits on their top-line models, but few pull it off well.
Also, the leather on the seats feels both soft and plump, thereby straddling the line between comfort and durability. It’s asking a lot of seats to be sat upon thousands of times and retain a feeling of cloud-like springiness without being worn down like so many couches, pillows, and unfortunate futons. Audi’s seats accomplish this.
Finally, putting the car in Sport mode unlocks the ability of the turbocharged engine to make the driving itself lively and fun. The RPMs went a lot higher, which made the acceleration more responsive, and added a lot of pep to the naturally diminutive four-cylinder engine. While the car defaults to normal mode to save fuel, it’s nice to know that there’s power available if you have multiple lanes to cross or need to get moving quickly.
So that was it. We drove through Cary, Holly Springs, and a bit of Apex, and all in all the weather sold us on this one. When the sun is shining and you’ve got some driving to do, the A5 convertible is a delicious companion. Would we recommend? Heck yes we would. It’s a brand new Audi; you’d have to be crazy to not enjoy it.
