Raising Arizona

Chasing a Tenacious Conquistador with a Stoic German : 2018 Audi S5 vs. the Coronado Trail Scenic byway.

- Josh Jacquot

HISTORY TELLS US THAT ZUNIS HAVE GOOD AIM.

On July 7, 1540, at a large pueblo near what is now the Arizona and New Mexico border, Spanish conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado took a well-placed rock to the head. The blow, delivered by a Zuni tribesman, removed him from the first military encounter between Europeans and first peoples in the future United States. Coronado regained his wits to discover that his men, lacking their concussed leader, had gone on to conquer the city of Hawikuh. Though Coronado’s stated purpose was to turn the locals’ loyalty to the pope and the Spanish throne, what he really wanted, the thing that had driven him there from deep in modern-day Mexico and before that from across the Atlantic, was gold.

Our purposes in Arizona are different. We’re here to retrace the steps that led Coronado to Hawikuh, to take the measure of the terrain, and to experience one of America’s most glorious driving roads. U.S. Route 191 between Morenci and Springerville, Arizona, is a 123-mile streamer of winding asphalt stretching south to north in eastern Arizona. Known now as the Coronado Trail Scenic Byway, it roughly follows the route Coronado took on his journey through the New World. Hopefully, for our sake, with less peril.

Coronado was Spanish, but we’re here with a German—Audi’s 2018 S5. And though the conquistador’s expedition included as many as 1500 horses, the S5 offers a modest 354. But its 3.0-liter V-6 shovels out 369 pound-feet of torque as low as 1370 rpm thanks to a single twin-scroll turbo mounted between its cylinder banks. It’s a drivable, if benign, lump. This is, however, the first S5 without a manual transmission, so we rely on ZF’s competent but ubiquitous eight-speed autobox to do the rowing.