Audi RS4 Edition 25 years (2024 - 2025) review – a fitting farewell to the BMW M3 fighter?
Audi's flamboyant fairwell to the RS4 is the edition 25 Years, with Competition suspension and a boost to 463bhp
In 2025, the Audi RS4 leaft Audi’s lineup, possibly for good, with Audi's range reset not coming in time to save it from being rebadged for the forthcoming hybridised Audi RS5 Avant's arrival. The RS4 is arguably at the centre of the journey Audi Sport has been on over the last three decades, picking up where the car that started it all, the Audi RS2, left off. So it’s only fitting that Audi has given the RS4 a flamboyant sendoff, in the form of the positively luminescent RS4 Edition 25 years.
Remembered fondly though it will be, the RS4 has never been the most interactive or engaging of devices over the years, even if it’s always been capable and quick. The B7 Audi RS4 of 2005 was a notable exception, with its silky V8 engine and deft balance. But it’s the last of the B9s, in recent years, that have been surprise stars. The RS4 Competition of a couple of years ago, with its expensive manually adjustable coilovers, was a properly engaging super estate that earned it a place among the very best fast Audis in our books. It’s upon this that Audi has based the RS4 Edition 25 Years, as a final flourish for the model.
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On top of the Competition’s three-way adjustable coilover suspension the edition 25 Years bumps the 2.9-litre twin-turbocharged V6 to 463bhp and 443lb ft. As you’d expect, it’s potent, getting to 62mph from a stop in 3.7sec (just 0.1sec slower than the BMW M3 Touring), on the way to a 186mph top speed. Happily, carbon ceramic brakes are standard fit.
You know the RS4 Edition 25 Years when you see it, especially if it’s in the Audi Exclusive Imola Yellow we see here – Mythos Black and Nardo Grey are also available. It’s properly hunkered down on its 20-inch milled matt palladium wheels for a start. Get closer and you note the matte carbon appearance package spanning the front splitter, flanking front intakes, side skirts, rear diffuser and mirror housings – ‘RS4 Edition 25 Years’ engraved on the window glass between the C- and D-pillars is a nice touch too. Open the door and the carbonfibre continues on the inside, with the standard carbon-backed bucket seats, themselves featuring diamond stitching and a yellow ‘RS4’ logo. It’s all quite lairy and in your face.
That continues when you fire it up, the emboldened V6 spinning into life with an extroverted bark. The second thing you notice is the white in the dials, an addition it shares with the Audi RS6 GT as a nod to the original Audi RS2. At night, it kicks out quite a glare. Adjust the seats and the first real frustration arrives; you can’t quite get them as low as you’d like, so it always feels like you’re sat somewhat on top of the RS4 Edition 25 Years, rather than within.
Get underway and exactly how serious the suspension is becomes immediately apparent. At low speeds the ride is restless – there’s no switching modes into ‘comfort’ to adjust it – and the carbon brakes grabby. Immediately you get the feeling it wants to be let off the lead. Get up to speed and it starts to make more sense, feeding everything the road has to offer through into the car, minus that last ten per cent of harshness. If a bit more of the fizz and feel the car feeds your backside made it to the steering wheel rim, the RS4 would be all the better for it. Nevertheless in terms of weighting and ratio, it’s dialled just so, with superb off-centre response thanks to the added front camber and stiffer control arms.
Hit the ‘RS’ button on the steering wheel and you can cycle through the two preset modes, RS1 and RS2. As standard, they’re set to put the car into its sportiest settings, with the transmission more eager to hold onto gears and the throttle more eager to respond, but you can configure them to your tastes. The last barrier to accessing everything the RS4 Edition 25 Years can give, is the traction and stability control, easily deactivated though it is. Now we’re ready to get the RS4 up on its toes.
There’s definitely something here, over and above the typical brutal effectiveness with which Audi RS products can demolish a road. There’s a life to it; sophistication to the damping, personality to the powertrain and balance to the chassis. The brakes too, are monstrously effective. What it lacks is some of the togetherness and cohesion you feel in an M3 Touring.
It feels competent, if reluctant and edgy, when dicing with the limits of grip, power flinging back and forth between the quattro sport differential at the rear and the front axle. You can definitely get it to move around in ways Audis of old could never comprehend but it feels outside of its comfort zone.
What it wants to do and what you end up wanting to do, is demolish roads as Audi Sport models always do, albeit involving the driver more. It feels more alive than any B9 before it, the engine more eager and the chassis more responsive, but its comfort zone is what it always was. An M3 Touring is still the best at doing M3 Touring things – being the responsive, collaborative super estate that’ll take all the abuse you can throw at it.
The other elephant in the room is of course the RS4’s advancing years, which are felt in the cabin in terms of the user interface and infotainment system. Having a range of buttons to control vital functions instead of touch controls six menus deep is a delight, but the visuals are a little dated. The BMW Curved Display in an M3 Touring looks, feels – and is – a generation ahead.
Price and rivals
The price for all this? Even the Audi Sport faithful must have found £115,880 a tough swallow – £119,180 if you wanted it in Imola Yellow. It is rare, though, with just 250 made, of which just 50 are in the UK. That price includes a Bang & Olufsen sound system, a 360-degree camera and wireless phone charging as standard, as it ought to. In fact, that there are any blank switches in the cabin at all is a bit cheeky.
Various options in this arena saw the RS4 25 Years go down fighting. The BMW M3 Touring was the Audi's most obvious rival, or the Mercedes-AMG C63 E Performance, though the Audi would easily be our pick over the latter. This is a car aimed squarely at Audi Sport’s most dedicated fanbase and it delivers on the brief of being a celebration and a last hurrah for fast Audi wagons as we know them. But this is no eleventh-hour transformation into a prospective group test winner.
