Dyno Run Suggests The Audi RS4 Makes More Power Than Advertised
Well, this isn’t particularly surprising, is it? A modern German performance car - in this case the Audi RS4 - is putting out more power than the official figures claim.
It’s something we’ve seen plenty of times before, with a recent example being the BMW M5. A dyno test for the new all-wheel drive super saloon suggested that it could be making almost 100bhp more at the crank than the Bavarian manufacturer claims.
In the case of this RS4 - a long-term test car belonging to Car Wow - the gains aren’t quite as dramatic: the test reveals it to be making 16hp and 37lb ft more than Audi’s figures. Also, that is an estimated figure derived from wheel horsepower (the primary measurement given by rolling roads), so the increase from the factory figures could be a little less. Or even a little more.
Audi even admitted not so long ago that its cars will generally accelerate faster than advertised. The company’s technical development chief Stephan Reil told Car Advice that “I’ve been in this job for nearly 20 years, and with all the cars I’ve worked on, the performance numbers we published were conservative…I simply don’t want to hear, when you guys write ‘well, they claim 3.9, but we got 4.0’.”
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
That colour though…
You like, or not? ‘Our’ RS3 was in Nardo Grey too and it seemed to split opinion quite dramatically…
Nardo Grey is gorgeous
Porsche, BMW, Audi… nearly all german manufactures are doing it
Brilliant comment, even though it’s just a meme.
Deja vu the gtr has done it before
power stated in the video is not wheel horsepower, it is brake horsepower. Those dynos factor in drivetrain loss when giving the numbers.
Thanks, I was wondering that
What if it was the dyno calibration ?
Thats the kind of cheating we want to see from VAG
How do they estimate the drivetrain losses? Maybe whit today’s technology, car manufacturers managed to reduce the losses.
They calculate it from letting the wheels spin freely after the run. The rate of slowdown is what gives you drivetrain loss
Well, that because most manufacturers measure power assuming bad conditions, bad fuel, altitude etc. Because if they’ll won’t, someone will measure it, get smaller number and sue them into oblivion because of “false advertising”, without even considering conditions.
Still sounds like a fart lol
Most German manufacturers advertise their hp nowadays as wheel-hp, unlike US,Korean or Japanese manufacturers which still use hp at the crank. So its no real surprise.