Audi 5-Cylinder: The Best Audi Engine

You can argue, but there really isn't a more Audi engine than a straight 5-cylinder from 1970's. The Ingolstadt brand grew up with this engine - it was widely used in a handful of cars and they even raced it in a number of racing machines, let alone the most popular of them all: the Audi Sport Quattro S1. Yes, times when Audi worked on five-cylinder on daily basis were great...

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- Credits -
“MikeeP Audi S2 sedan 2012” by Jon Öst

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[tobiasholst]

The sound of a 5 cylinder engine is music from motor heaven

[Keleigh]

I worked as an Audi dealer mechanic for more than 30 years, during that time I don't remember ever seeing a significant mechanical breakdown of a 5 cylinder. I owned one myself for 20 years, it had north of 200k miles when I sold it. Truly a rock solid engine.

[anthonyohara]

I had an 850R Volvo Estate for a 12 months. Between the low grunt of the 5 cylinder, the Turbo and the induction noise, defiantly one of the sweetest sounding combinations I've ever heard.

[FliesFLL]

VAG built this engine because the EA827 engine [the typical VW/Audi 1.5 to 2.0 liter inline four cylinder] CANNOT be brought past about 2.1 liters. The engine was designed to be very compact, an entirely new crankcase would have to be designed for more displacement. In the 1970's, they came up with the solution of adding another cylinder to this four cylinder to create the "Audi" 5 cylinder. This was advantageous because the five cylinder could be built with the same tooling as the four cylinder.

They went on to take two of the EA827's and created the Audi V8. Then they sawed two of the center cylinders out to create the 90 degree Audi V6. Then, they dusted off old plans and built a V10 engine out of two of the inline 5's. This V10 was proposed for the Porsche 928 but never built, but did wind up as the engine in the Lamborghini Gallardo, among others. All these engines have 88 mm bore spacing.

Great video!

[LongPeter]

Mum banging on the locked bedroom door, "Are you listening to German 5 cylinder engines in there!?"
"No, it's porn, I swear!"

[LoyaltyNECO]

I love my RS3. Such a unique sounding car. I can’t help but smile anytime I start it up, or go through areas (between buildings, under over passes etc) with amazing acoustics 😈

[jokersweet]

Here I still got my 1994 Audi UR-S4 2.2T 5cylinder. Its is absolutely bone stock till this day, pristine condition. First register keeper, Never will sell it. Got another project S4 2.2t making anywhere 800 to 1000bhp 😏

[vinzclortho]

I got my hands on an 84 4000q back in 08 for a song. Had it for 10 years, put a lot into it, had a lot fun, bought a lot of tires( going between 3 sets of wheels), fixed all that i could with the available parts both new and used, had to sell it. I loved that Zermatt silver. I would like to have another someday, but maybe not one that was so old, or just in better shape.

[thebaconsonful]

As the owner of a 5cyl turbo, the sound is amazing.

[krudmuphinstudioz]

I love my Volvos and their 5-cylinder engines, but I must confess the Audi 5-cylinders sound a lot cooler, haha

[snailedEJ]

RS3 owner here....once you go 5 cyl...you never go back!

[davidkelley]

So while I love my Volvo 5-cylinders, I love all 5 cylinders.

I wouldn’t mind having an Audi 5-cylinder.

[Retrotyp]

Wall of text warning regarding Ferdinand Piëchs role in the 5-cylinder development:

Piëch had a weird obsession with oddball engines and especially those related to the number 5.

In the early 1970's he was involved with the development of a new economic engine generation at Mercedes-Benz for the W115. He convinced the other technicians that rather than going for 4 cylinder applications with different bore and stroke it would make more sense to just increase the number of cylinders. Therefore they were focusing development on creating an engine family which was available as 4 and also as a 5 cylinder version.
The engines were originally supposed to be petrol ones. After they started testing it quickly became apparent that the 5 cylinder started shaking badly at around 5000rpm. Development was set on hold. Piëch then just came up with the idea of using the engine design as a diesel since they wouldn't really rev past 5000rpm anyways and thus the OM616 and OM617 were born.

In 1972 Piëch joined Audi as head of dept. for special tasks in technical development. Since they were badly in need of a prestigeous engine they were looking for a way to develop a 6 cylinder unit. Since Audi's unfortunately had a layout which featured the engine to be in front of the front axle, an inline 6 application would have been to front heavy. Piech instead came up with the idea of a 5 cylinder engine again to combine "the economical fuel usage of a 4 cylinder with the smoothness of an inline 6". Thus from the EA827 4 cylinder the EA828 5 cylinder was born.

But still the urge for a 6 cylinder engine for VAG cars was big so that there were multiple efforts made, resulting in the VR6, the 12V Audi V6 and a 24V Audi inline 6 (!) which was co-developed by Porsche. Piëch was involved in the development of every single one of them.

Since the Problem with the FF layout on Audi's persisted the 24V inline 6 design was then sold to Volvo who used it in the 960. From this engine design later the Volvo 5 cylinders (e.g. used in T5) were derived. Those engines were then licensed by Ford and used in the Focus RS.

Piëch in the mean time initiated development of the VR5 and the 5 valve layout on the Audi 1.8(t) and Audi V6 engines.

TL; DR: Piëch kind of gave birth to most 5 cylinder engines used in passenger cars until the mid 2000's (except Fiat and Honda ones) and applied a 5 valve layout to an engine which would not have needed it. If that is not an unhealthy obsession with the number 5 I don't know what else is.

Oh, speaking of oddballs: He also initiated development of the W8 Passat, the W12 used in Bentleys, Pheatons etc. and the W16.4 Veyron of course.

[-Eckhart]

Totally agree with the last comment that it's good Audi keeps this as a heritage engine for the petrolheads. To me it is the best sounding engine ever. Who can forget the sound of an S2 Quattro echoing through some Scandinavian forest from 2 km away and ominously getting closer. I have CD's of this sound and I file them with my Bruckner and Mahler symphonies.

[mariuszwaszak]

I used to have 80 B4 with 2.3NG engine. I miss this car so much and the beautiful noise it was making when accelerating.

[chargersrt]

I would go further. The Audi 5-cyl is among the best engines ever created.

[bigandcrispy]

as a owner of a URS4 with an aan 5cyl turbo i can say that if you can get your hands on one of these cars do it parts are hard to find and expensive but by far the best driving experience I've had

[LatvianVideo]

3:50 I looked the audi up, and it still is being loved and driven, it has driven 20000km since 2016

[alexnyan]

A solid engine video, as always quality from our VisioRacer, thanks m8.

[jasoneldridge]

The T5 2.5 pd engine is actually half a V10 used in Toureg and Phaeton, and uses the right hand bank cyl head.