I drove an Audi RS4 at the weekend and now I’m sad

There’s that old yarn that you should never meet your heroes, but I met one of mine at the weekend and now I’m more enamoured than ever.

A friend of mine picked up a B7 Audi RS4 Avant on Saturday. He told me he’d call by on his way home, and I waited by the window to see him coming, because that’s how sad I am.

As I saw him turn the first corner into my estate, I hastily ran outside in time to see the Sprint blue painted, piece of German engineering excellence, burble it’s V8 burble onto my street.

Jaw-dropping.

It sounds as good as it looks.

To non-car people, the B7 RS4 is nothing special. It’s just another 12-year old Audi estate car, probably a diesel.

To those who know however, it’s muscular, wide-arches and its baritone, naturally aspirated V8 are tell-tale signs of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

I could drink in both the aesthetic and aural delights of the RS4 for hours, but there is more wonder to be had behind the wheel.

As you slip into the heavily-bolstered Recaro bucket seat and press the ubiquitous starter button, the eight-cylinder-symphony jumps into life, sending vibrations through your body, egging you to get driving.

You push the satisfyingly slick and mechanical feeling manual gearbox into first and pull away. The first stretch of open road you see allows you to bury the throttle and suddenly you are much further away from where you were a moment ago, as the effortless acceleration pulls you all the way to the 8,000-rpm redline in a crescendo of V8 song.

Then, inevitably, a corner arrives and the quattro all-wheel-drive system gives you confidence inspiring grip to accompany the insane power. With the torque split biased to the rear, you can feel the car rotating through its centre and the smile on your face grows ever larger.

I should probably take a cold shower, as you can tell, I’m getting a bit hot under the collar for this machine.

It is that good though; and I admire my friend for taking the plunge, as a car like this makes little or no sense, especially in Ireland.

Road tax is in excess of €1800 annually, it drinks fuel like it’s going out of fashion (which it is) and the maintenance costs are eye-watering. If I were in his position however, I would do the exact same, because cars like this are never going to happen again.

Future generations will wonder what this is.

A 4.2 litre, naturally aspirated V8 estate car with a manual gearbox. No one is going to make such a car again.

Sure, there are still performance cars out there. Mercedes still make the C63 with a V8, but it’s been downsized and has a couple of turbos strapped to it; and the current RS4, that now has two less cylinders as well as forced induction; and as for a manual gearboxes, forget about it.

Objectively these new cars are better in every way. They’re faster, safer and more economical. Subjectively though, they’re soulless.

This is a common theme across the car-landscape too, not just super-saloons and estates. The Porsche 911 is now turbo-charged, and Ferrari haven’t built a car with a manual gearbox in over a decade (because they only sold three of them).

Come to think of it, I can’t think of any new car I would lust after over a car from decades past.

A manual Ferrari California, rarer than hen’s teeth.

The car world hit a peak in the middle of the last decade. You could get a BMW 5 series with a V10 loosely based on an F1 engine. Koenigsegg sold an 800+ horsepower hypercar with a manual gearbox and hot hatchbacks could be had with high-revving, big capacity, normally aspirated engines.

OK, my glasses may be rose-tinted, and I’m no luddite, times they must change, but as Clarkson put it a few years ago, I feel like we’re at an ending.

I suppose I should be happy I’m here to experience the last days of the old guard and my experience in the RS4 highlighted this, but a world of cold, soulless white goods on the horizon makes me feel very sad indeed.