Stick on the Human League and set sail for the Falklands - it's 1982 all over again

IT’S brightly coloured, perfect for TV car chases, evocative of the Eighties and a great promotional exercise for Audi when it arrives later this year. You guessed it - I’m really looking forward to the next series of Ashes to Ashes.

Clever clogs have probably already worked out I’m a bit of a fan of Gene Hunt’s tyre shredding antics (after all, this column is named in its honour) and among the highlights of any couch potato year should be watching a bright red Audi Quattro going far more sideways than its four wheel drive system ought to allow it. Alex Drake might be gorgeous and Gene’s a chauvinistic genius, but the four-ringed wonder’s still the star of the show.

But now Audi themselves have got on the nostalgia train – although probably not back on the rally stages – with a Quattro revisit all of their own, called the RS5. I was going to save them the shame of comparing it with the icon that made them a household name, but when the firm itself announces it with the headline “Audi RS5 coupe debuts in Geneva on 30th anniversary of Quattro”, it’s openly inviting comparisions.

The 450bhp coupe’s a bit of a fatso compared to the spindly original, but can you honestly say you weigh less than you did during the days of Duran Duran and bad haircuts? It also isn’t going to have the Group B rallying pedigree of its predecessor, but after the rave reviews the RS4 and R8 attracted, chances are the Germans have got another great motor on their hands.

Would Gene Hunt drive one? I reckon he would if it didn’t cost £58,500, which is about the same as an entry-level 911. As much as I’d love to see the RS5 smoking its tyres in pursuit of baddies on BBC One in about twenty years, I reckon it’s still going to be a merchant banker’s toy rather than the wheels of a foulmouthed TV cop.

With Britain smarting from a nasty recession, fresh quarrels over the Falkland Islands, and even Spandau Ballet back on tour you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s 1982 all over again. I just hope Audi’s efforts prove just as exciting this time around.