Audi just pulled the wraps off the 2027 RS5, and if you were expecting a quiet, incremental refresh, you got the opposite. The new RS5 arrives with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, a dramatically restyled body, a six-figure price tag, and enough internet controversy to keep automotive forums busy for months.
Under the hood, Audi kept the 2.9-liter twin-turbo V-6 but gave it serious upgrades. Output climbs to 503 horsepower and 443 lb-ft of torque, and for the first time in RS history, an electric motor joins the party. Combined output jumps to 630 horsepower and 608 lb-ft, with Audi quoting 0–62 mph in 3.6 seconds and openly advertising that you can drift it.
On paper, it sounds like a monster. In reality, the internet immediately found two numbers it liked a lot less: 5,200 pounds and $125,000.
The Weight Problem
When you bolt a full hybrid system onto an already substantial sport sedan, the scale tells the story. The new RS5 hatchback-sedan tips in at 5,192 pounds. The Avant wagon variant is a shade heavier at 5,225. For context, the last RS5 Sportback tested by the automotive press weighed 4,103 pounds. That’s over 1,000 pounds of additional mass, more than the weight of a grand piano now living permanently in your trunk.
The car community noticed immediately. One Reddit user who owns a 2026 RS6 Avant put it plainly: “The weight is felt in the corners, and the new RS5 is heavier still than that.” Another commenter in the same debate made a comparison that probably stings more than Audi’s PR team would like: the RS5 now weighs roughly as much as a three-quarter-ton, four-door, four-wheel-drive pickup truck.
That’s not a comparison you usually hear in the same sentence as a sport sedan.
Physics doesn’t care about marketing. Torque-vectoring hardware, the battery pack, the PHEV system — it all adds up. The real question is whether the chassis tuning can disguise 5,200 pounds well enough to live up to the RS badge. That answer won’t come until people actually get seat time.
The Interior Debate
The exterior drew criticism too, particularly the new interpretation of Audi’s single-frame grille, which one commenter described as too smooth and lacking the aggression you’d expect from a range-topping RS model. Some feel the S5 now looks about as sharp as the RS5 should, and the RS5 itself ought to look like it came from a different, angrier planet.
The interior debate has been louder. The RS5 gets an 11.9-inch digital instrument cluster, a 14.5-inch central touchscreen, and a second passenger-side display for performance apps. The RS software includes racetrack sector timing, route analytics, and drift-angle logging, which is genuinely cool. The issue, according to a vocal slice of the community, is everything around those screens.
Electric door handles. Piano black plastics. Digitized climate controls. A gear selector that barely qualifies as one. A hazard button that seems to be doing three jobs and none of them particularly well. These are the complaints that keep surfacing.
One Reddit user said no performance upgrade can compensate for what they called a cost-cutting interior dressed up in screens. Another argued the whole package feels like Audi has drifted from what once made it a luxury benchmark, suggesting the interior direction is aimed at a different demographic entirely.
Where People Agree
Amid all the criticism, there is genuine, enthusiastic praise, and almost all of it is aimed at the exterior. The widened bodywork, fender flares adding 3.5 inches of visual muscle, the checkered-flag LED light signature, the ovular exhaust tips out back, and the nine available colors, including Ascari Blue and Progressive Red, have people genuinely excited.
One commenter called it the best-looking thing they’d seen in five years of new car releases. Another described it as the kind of car you imagined driving as a kid, somewhere between attainable and fantasy, without needing a Lamborghini badge to feel special.
Said one fan: “I love it. Audi is seriously getting back on form. I saw a new RS3 the other day, it has so much presence on the road for such a small car.”
The honest summary of where the internet landed: the outside got a standing ovation, the powertrain numbers drew real respect, and the interior and weight figures generated the kind of friction you don’t cure with a software update. Whether the 2027 RS5 drives well enough to quiet its critics is still an open question, but at 630 horsepower and 5,200 pounds, it’s going to make for a very interesting answer.