It'll be two things - cost, and emmissions.
Firstly, on cost, the VW Group produces an enormous number of 4cyl engines. Therefore costs to produce 4cyl engines and their components are lower. They can then design and produce variants on 4cyls for different applications, rather than designing myriad different whole engines, and can then engineer the different platforms to accept the same engines. Producing a completely differently packaged engine for a small volume of sportier cars doesn't make all that much economic sense - continuing to develop a quirky 5cyl engine for just one model type would have been very costly. Even the high tech V8 in the RS4 is a variant of an existing V8 which is itself a development of an engine that has been around for a looong time. (Although of course that doesn't explain some of the bizarre engine types that VW has come up with of late, like the W layouts, the V5 etc, so even the logical Germans can go crazy sometimes!)
Secondly on emissions, all car manufactuers are being forced to reduce their emissions. The only real way to do that is to reduce the size of the engine. Hence the now appearing rise of smaller sized, but forced induction motors, although that does somewhat go against Audi's apparent drive away from turbos in its high performance S and RS range?!
Firstly, on cost, the VW Group produces an enormous number of 4cyl engines. Therefore costs to produce 4cyl engines and their components are lower. They can then design and produce variants on 4cyls for different applications, rather than designing myriad different whole engines, and can then engineer the different platforms to accept the same engines. Producing a completely differently packaged engine for a small volume of sportier cars doesn't make all that much economic sense - continuing to develop a quirky 5cyl engine for just one model type would have been very costly. Even the high tech V8 in the RS4 is a variant of an existing V8 which is itself a development of an engine that has been around for a looong time. (Although of course that doesn't explain some of the bizarre engine types that VW has come up with of late, like the W layouts, the V5 etc, so even the logical Germans can go crazy sometimes!)
Secondly on emissions, all car manufactuers are being forced to reduce their emissions. The only real way to do that is to reduce the size of the engine. Hence the now appearing rise of smaller sized, but forced induction motors, although that does somewhat go against Audi's apparent drive away from turbos in its high performance S and RS range?!
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