Audi RS4 Avant Takes On BMW M850i in Acceleration and Braking Tests
Which car will come out on top: The big and brawny BMW M850i coupe or the lighter, and less powerful Audi RS4 dragon wagon?
What do you get when you combine German engineering, turbocharging, and all-wheel drive? A Mini Cooper S E Countryman ALL4? A Mercedes-AMG S 63 Cabriolet? A BMW M550i? Yes. Clearly, mixing those elements doesn’t always result in the same vehicle. Just take a look at this head-to-head competition between the Audi RS4 Avant and the BMW M850i.
Carwow‘s Mat Watson knows their similarities well. He previously had the RS4 as a long-term test car, then got the M850i as its replacement. Sitting behind the wheel of the Audi, Watson says, “They’re both torque-converter automatics – this has an eight-speed, that [the BMW] has an eight-speed. They’ve both got all-wheel drive, and they’ve both got a sort of launch control.”
Watson’s also aware of just how different the German luxury/performance cars are from each other. He says the Audi “has a 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 with 450 horsepower and 600 newton metres [443 lb-ft] of torque. That BMW has a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with 530 horsepower and 750 newton-meters [553 lb-ft] of torque.” The Bimmer has significantly more grunt, but it also has 200 more kilograms (441 pounds) to carry around.
One thing Watson doesn’t know for sure is how the two similar-but-totally-different cars will fare in a drag race. To find out, he and a colleague pit them against each other in a couple of acceleration tests. The first is a quarter mile dig race from a dead stop. Watson stays in the Audi while his coworker pilots the Bimmer. They start out just about even, but as they rapidly move forward, the M850i starts to take the lead. It stays ahead until it crosses the finish line.
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The BMW wins the race with a time of 11.9 seconds, but just barely; the Audi makes the run in 12 seconds flat. Watson doesn’t overstate things when he says, “Man, that was close.”
For the second test of each car’s acceleration, Watson and his fellow driver battle each other in a roll race from 50 mph. Once again, the BMW comes in first, thanks to its gearbox downshifting with lightning speed.
After all of that full-throttle action, Watson and his colleague go to the opposite end of the performance spectrum and try to find out which of their two cars can come to a stop from 70 mph in the shortest distance. As soon as they blow through a pair of orange cones, they slam on their brakes. From Watson’s perspective, the outcome is a little too close to call. If you ask us, we think the BMW won again, but by a small margin – just as it did in the first drag race.
There’s no denying the M850i a beast of a GT car. It’s got loads of power and the gearbox to put it down in a hurry. The little Audi is an impressive machine, too. On paper, it’s at a disadvantage. But on a strip of straight tarmac with no speed limit, it’s at home.
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