Thread: Audi RS 6 Avant

I've always had a particular fondness for the unconventional. Carpets over sofas, Steely Dan over Bryan Adams, Bullets over Karizmas, Octavia Combis over standard Octis. For a while I even went around recommending Indigo Marinas over the Indigo, till I stopped recommending Indigos altogether. And when you rationalise it, an estate does make more sense than a saloon and as in most cases, particularly that of the Indigos, is better looking too. But we and most of the world, still buy sedans.
Me? I can't wait to have kids.

If nothing then for the excuse it gives me to buy the car I've secretly lusted after the Octavia vRS Combi. Says a lot about you that you're a smart caring metro-sexual man of the noughties, one who loves his time at the hair dressers and who's not afraid to wear pink, a caring dad who has all the space in the world to carry his kids' considerable junk, mini-mota bikes and go-kart, but also with 100 octane flowing through his veins and huge power under his right foot. Or at least I hope it'll say all this about me when I eventually get myself one, while commanding every other road users' respect.

My head hurts though, trying to figure out what to make of the Audi RS6 Avant. I've lost track of the number of times I've said there's no such thing as too much horsepower, but invariably I'd have been talking about lOOPS cars. Not something that makes 580PS. And definitely not an estate that develops 580PS. Read that again - 580PS of power. In an estate. This is definitely, blithely, wrong. Wrong and yet so right, so strangely, intriguingly, alluring turning-on that instead of lusting after the 15 R8s glistening in the pitlane, I'm drawn by the magnetic force-field of the five RS6s hunkering purposely in the pitlane. I can't believe the groan I let out when the instructor says we'll be going out in the R8s first I'm actually ready to trade in driving a mid engined supercar for an estate. It's the non conformational thing to do. And that's so up my alley you can't see the road from where the alley branched off.

So what does 580PS feels like, in what's after all a shopping trolley. In a word, bizarre. Let's put it into context I've just driven the R8, a seminally fast supercar, rather quickly round the Eurospeedway Lausitz. Every lap I've got quicker, learned something more about the car, come to appreciate how truly special supercars really are. And then I press the start button on the RS6 and the engine explodes into life and startles me out of my pants. I don't recall the R8 doing this to me; in fact I don't seem to recall the tone or timbre of the R8 when fired up. The RS6 mildly shocks you, bizarrely manages to sound more powerful than a supercar.

Which might not seem quite so bizarre when you realise the RS6 is actually more powerful; 580PS to 420PS. 650Nm to 420Nm of torque. You read that right, an estate making l60PS more than a bonafide super car. And utterly demolishing it on torque. Things are getting so bizarre now, they're transcending into the surreal. And then as we roll out of the pit lane the skies open up and it begins to pelt down. I'm no rain god and prefer not to take any chances in the rain, particularly with a car I know nothing of. But she accelerates so violently that I'm caught off guard and arrive at the first corner carrying far too much speed than is prudent. Turn in for the apex knowing full well she'll not make it but with only a slight hint of understeer she fractionally misses the apex. And that for a car that's massive in size and tips the scales at over two tons quite frankly boggles the mind.

I'm following with former European rally champion Jochi Kleint at the wheel runs wide. And Jochi is a man with ten times my driving ability. He later on complains of shot tyres on the R8, which might be true, but even then the fact that the RS6 can keep up with an R8 around a track in the pouring rain speaks volumes for the abilities of the car. It's the 'supercar for all seasons' philosophy that began with the original RS, the RS2 (built by Porsche) and keeps getting stronger with every passing RS car.

Comparing the R8 to the RS6 is akin to chalk and cheese but I've been driving the R8 for most of the day and can't help draw a few quick comparisons. The first is that the R56 is not only massive, but it feels Its size too. Turn in and the steering isn't as communicative, brake and there isn't the immediacy and feel of theRB's and mid-corner she does feel a bit soft and ponderous. But that's because my benchmarks are now in supercar territory, a little recalibration of the brain is required to absorb the depth of the RS6's abilities.




Like RSs before it, the RS6 runs Dynamic Ride Control where the dampers are connected diagonally to reduce roll and dive. It cuts body roll massively and gives it a remarkably flat cornering attitude backed up by leech like cornering grip though all. What really makes my brain do somersaults though is that the R8 said and done she's a little lacking in feel. DRC also has three suspension modes dynamic, comfort and sport and we're told in comfort mode she's surprisingly supple. For track use sport is the best mode, firming up the suspension and in conjunction with ESP that has two modes (mod¬erate power oversteer angles in the first three gears and completely off) and quattro that as a 40:60 torque split in favour of the rear it delivers tons of entertainment and remarkable road holding.

But it's still the engine that's the highlight of the car the 5.0-litre VlO direct-injection petrol derived from Lamborghini's Gallardo. In the RS6 it gets two turbo-chargers and that's what gives it 650Nm of stump-pulling torque from just 1600rpm all the way to 6250rpm. So much as breathe on the throttle and whatever gear she's in, she takes off, like afterburners lighting up on a pair of jet engines strapped into the boot. Watching this massive estate match an R8 on performance is truly an awe inspiring sight; 100kmph comes up in 4.6 seconds, exactly the same as the R8, and on the optional sports exhaust she sounds even better. Top speed is an electronically limited 250kmph though for a little extra cash Audi will unlock the limiter allowing you to hit 280kmph.

Despite the immense low-down grunt the engine has a huge appetite for revs, wailing up to its 6700rpm redline at which point the six-speed automatic doesn't auto up-shift (thank god for that) in sport mode. Flick the paddle and you're greeted by a classic example of the sheer obsessiveness of Audi's engineers - despite being a regular torque converter the shift times are just 100 milliseconds and they've even man¬aged an exhaust pop like a DSG box on hard-throttle upshifts.

Our test cars were running massive 20-inch 275/35 tyres hiding optional ceramic brakes (an incredible 413mm front and 350mm rear) and completely filling out the squared-off fender flares which hark back to the original Ur Quattro. Other visual changes from the regular A6 Avant are the silver finish surround of the goatee grille, LED head lamps, LED tail lamps and twin oval tailpipes. Inside it's like the (Lambo-engined) S6 with lots of chrome and carbon-fibre, an addi¬tional boost gauge, flat-bottomed steering wheel and excellent seats emblazoned with RS logos. And lest we forget, there's a huge 565-litre boot for the dog to play around in, or whimper in fear when you so much as breathe on the throttle. And you'll be doing that very often, for if 580PS can't addict you to power, you might as well be riding a bicycle.

Then again, do you really need 580PS in an estate? There's never a thing like too much power, but there comes a time when enough is enough, and the RS6 probably marks the point where even nutter estates need to call it quits. The RS6 does what it sets out to do, demolish the horizon, but it does so with monumental power and rather less in the way of tactile feel. At the end of two sessions of driving, and being completely blown away by the RS6, I returned back to Dresden with a sense of fulfilment (having driven the maddest estate on earth) but without those separation pangs you get after driving a truly epic car -precisely what I felt every time I drove the RS4.