Audi RS6 first drive

The new Audi RS6: lighter, quicker, bigger, cleaner and more economical than it was before. But not more powerful. Where once there was a 572bhp 5.0-litre V10, there is now a twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 developing 553bhp. 

Given the flagship model’s normally brazen display of power, the slight backward step is a notable development — even if it does prove largely inconsequential given the hike in performance. 

That, in real-world terms, is more typical of Audi’s progression. Thanks to the pair of twin-scroll turbochargers mounted within the engine’s ‘V’, torque has grown from 479lb ft to 516lb ft. Alongside a 90kg reduction in kerb weight (credited to increased use of lightweight materials) the RS6 now manages 62mph in a supercar-fast 3.9 seconds. That makes it, unsurprisingly, the quickest-accelerating estate car in the world. 

Depending on how much you really want it, there’s also the potential to make it the fastest overall: two levels of the optional Dynamic pack push the electronically limited top speed first to 174mph, and then to 189mph. In the real-world, however, it should prove to be a more economical car. Cylinder deactivation, which turns the RS6 into a four-cylinder car when circumstance allow, help a claimed combined score of 28.8mpg.

Along with that technical first for the model comes another: adaptive air suspension is now the standard set-up, with stiffer steel springs relegated to the options list. Audi’s latest all-wheel-drive system uses a self-locking centre differential to split the available torque 40 per cent front, 60 per cent rear (and all the way up to 85 per cent to the rear if required), as well as left to right courtesy of a standard sport diff on the back axle. 

The car arrives in the UK with an on-the-road price of £76,985, which is a marginal reduction on the sticker worn by its predecessor. Audi has also delivered an impressive 31 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions, although at 229g/km the RS6 just misses out on the VED boundary between expensive K and exorbitant L.

Mean looking. Few manufacturers possess a blistered-arch history as distinguished as Audi’s, but even for quattro GmBH the RS6 is a squat, savage thing up close. Dramatic air intakes and a gaping honeycomb grille help tug the A6’s soft expression into a wicked grin. Elsewhere, in proportions almost too big for a single gaze, there’s the sprawling wider stance that could only be the result of a serious four-ringed fettling. 

On optional 21in wheels, the car’s presence registers on a scale usually reserved for Manga animation. While the outside might be amply endowed with adolescent fantasy, the inside is all business. The piano black and brushed aluminum cabin is a sculpted siren song to the car’s middle-age, high-income buyer. Aside from the badges and associated brouhaha it feels much like it is: a seriously well kitted-out A6.

Without the blustery sports exhaust fitted, it fires into life much like one, too. There’s the merest whiff of a snarl, and then the V8 disappears into a noiseless, lavishly refined background. 

So consistent and unrelenting is the new turbocharged V8 that, flat out, it better resembles a prodigious and violent winch than a sophisticated petrol motor. In a straight line (and, tellingly, on the autobahn) the pick-up, eagerness and capacity for giving its digital readout a workout is phenomenal, if not as organically satisfying as the high-revving, naturally aspirated V8 aboard the RS4.