S-Car-Go: Test-Driving All of Audi’s Super Sporty “S” Class Vehicles
Snails are traditionally the symbol of brainless pokiness. They excrete a vile and irritating slime, andthey are garden pests. Their hermaphroditic reproductive habits and tooth-covered tongue, while intriguing, are kind of freaky. You wouldn’t think that a comparison, then, between snails and luxury vehicles would be at all fitting. But thathasn’t stopped us from suggesting this association in the past, and it’s certainly not going to ruin the ridiculous, homophonic title to this piece, in which we attempt to link the high-end, high-speed “S” Vehicles of German automaker Audi with the mollusk-y French dish, escargot.
Bear with us here. Like these prodigiously powered Teutons, snails are something of a superfood, extremely high in protein for their size and weight. Similar to the lightweight aluminum-intensive S-line vehicles, snails are also low in fat. In order for a snail to be made fit for human consumption, the gastropod must be purged ofinternal objectionables, and you will find nothing to object to within the diamond-quilted-leather-covered, noise-cancelling-Bang-&-Olufsen stereo-equipped, Wi-Fi-enabled, air-suspension, road-imperfection-absorbing interior of these cars. And like the consumption of snails, the driving of Audis has a historic association with the elite.
We recently had a chance to drive all of Audi’s sporty “S” cars (and a couple of their even sportier RSs). None of them was drowned in butter, garlic, and parsley but all of them drowned us in opulence, vehemence, and speed. Click through the slide show below for our numerically ordered, and snail-free, report. (Base prices listed.)