Audi Wants To Make Its Cars Easier To Skid With 2026MY Updates

Of the big three German premium brands’ performance offerings, those from Audi have always traded off safe, sturdy all-wheel drive security as opposed to BMW’s pin-sharp balance and Mercedes’ tyre-smoking lunacy.

But because it’s 2025 and nothing makes sense in the car market, most hot BMWs and Mercs are now all-wheel drive anyway, and it’s Audi that’s trying to introduce some ‘rear-biased driving dynamics’ into its cars with a 2026 model year update for the S5 and S6 E-Tron.

That comes by way of a new ‘Dynamic Plus’ drive mode being brought into both cars for the 2026 model year. Both remain all-wheel drive, but the twin-turbo V6-powered S5 will leverage its Quattro centre diff to send more power to the back, while the all-electric S6 E-Tron will do it by simply using electric wizardry to alter the distribution.

Both will employ brake torque vectoring to keep things stable across the rear axle, too, and the mode will also automatically set the ESP to Sport, ‘which enables controlled oversteer’. Sorry, we just need to double-check this really is an Audi press release we’re reading.

Yes, it really is, and that’s not the only change coming to the Audi range for next year. Its newer electric models on the PPE platform – that’s the A6 and Q6 E-Tron and their respective sportier S versions – now get stronger regen braking, allowing them to come to a standstill without the brake pedal being touched in its most aggressive setting.

The A5, Q5, A6 E-Tron and Q6 E-Tron families are also getting updates to their ADAS, user interface, voice assistant and interior light and sound functions, but by far the best bit of news from all of this – better even than the oversteer bit – is that they’re ditching some of the horrid, undersized, plasticky, touch-sensitive-but-inexplicably-also-clickable steering wheel controls that currently blight them, replacing them with proper scroll wheels for volume and adjusting the driver display. Yes, that was the sound of us popping a bottle of celebratory Champagne. 

All these various changes will begin to roll out from the middle of next month, hopefully ushering in a new era of more oversteery, less irritating-to-operate Audis.