Car enthusiast and technical writer Chris Harris has been tasked with the unenviable chore of driving exotic and high-performance automobiles to draw comparisons and give performance evaluations to the public. It’s a dirty job indeed, but someone has to do it.

In this week’s installment of his web video series for Drive, we find Harris behind the wheel of the new 450-horsepower 2012 Audi RS4, pitting it against the original Audi B5, B7, and the throaty 6.2 liter C63 AMG from Mercedes-Benz to get a feel for the origins and intentions of Audi’s latest sport-performance roadster.