If the looks don’t get you, the experience will. It’s as if the engineers at Audi, given the freedom of a last hurrah and a substantial budget befitting of a departing legend, gave one final flex to send the RS6 out as king of the fast estates. Others have cropped up in recent times; pretenders to the throne? With the Audi RS6 GT, the team at Ingolstadt can at least sit back safe in the knowledge that they did all they could. Wider, leaner, meaner, fitter, faster, stronger; this is really a supercar masquerading as a sensible family runaround. Or a sensible family runaround masquerading as a supercar.
It would be easy to simply dismiss the Audi RS6 GT as an RS6 Performance with a fancy sticker set. Some ‘80s racing livery, a bit of nip and tuck, a limited edition run of 660 models and that’ll be £176,975 please. Could the tweaks really elevate the experience so substantially beyond the ‘standard’ car? The Performance, after all, is a brute in its own right. The RS6 has long featured on most fantasy garage compilations. All round practical appeal with performance to outrun most sports cars? That’ll do for taking the kids to school. I’ll keep the supercar back for the weekends.
The RS6 GT, then, is something of a greatest hits compilation. You get all the comfort and practicality, you get a tubthumping V8 and you get the striking aesthetics. One thing’s for certain, this isn’t a car for the bashful. You could have it in black or grey but if it were my money, I’d take the white every day. Why not? If you want something a little more subtle, the Performance is still there. Time, then, to roll up our sleeves and go all out.
Living with the Audi RS6 GT
The major talking point here is the attention this car garners. People beeping at you, pointing, laughing, wanting to race you. You get the whole experience here. No petrol station stop passes without at least one question. To those in the know, the Audi RS6 is a car that produces great excitement. Another RS6 driver excitedly proclaimed he hadn’t seen one on the road yet – and he probably won’t again.
That run of 660 – the model tested is 659/660 – makes this car rare as hen’s teeth. Only around 60 are in righthand drive and I think there are only around 10-15 in the UK. Some of those will be in the more subtle black or grey guise, too. The Audi RS6 GT is an experience in and of itself.
It is still, however, a car. Over 758 miles of driving, I achieved 21.2mpg. On a motorway run to Leeds and back, I saw 27mpg, which was better than the Defender 110 hybrid I recently reviewed. If you want to save the planet, get yourself a twin-turbo 4.0ltr V8.
The greatest hardship is resisting the temptation to tap into all that power. As we entered Lent during this review, you think Jesus had it tough for his 40 days and 40 nights, but he didn’t have to drive an Audi RS6 GT through a 50mph average speed zone on the M1. Do those cameras really work? Do you know anyone who’s been caught by them? Don’t let the intrusive thoughts win.
Instead, sit back in the carbon bucket seats and try to relax. Fixed position, but very comfortable. Bowers & Wilkins audio, an infotainment and HVAC setup that is just beginning to show its age… there are worse places to be. But they’re not why you’re here.
What’s the Audi RS6 GT like to drive?
The average speed zones didn’t quite stretch to 40 days, so there was ample opportunity during my week to explore the Audi RS6 GT in the settings in which ts was built for. Sitting on manually adjustable coilover suspension, it flows beautifully with the road. The ride is a touch harsher than an air spring setup but feels more organic.
One complaint that has nagged away at RS Audis is that they can be supremely competent but somewhat boring. It’s a reputation the RS6 GT does much to shed. Supremely competent? Absolutely. A bit dull? Not a bit of it. The engineering that has gone into this is deeply impressive. The steering and chassis feel bright and alive, with more communication than you might expect. The steering isn’t the final word in feedback, but it’s quick and accurate, making it easy to place this substantial car even in the tightest of settings.
At just over 5m long and 2.1m wide, weighing north of two tons, there’s the potential for it to be outright intimidating. The way it shrinks around you marks out the Audi RS6 GT – it never feels as big as it is, even down tighter B-roads. It also performs the trick of all great cars in that you don’t need to lean on it to enjoy it.
Of course that helps, though. With 621bhp and 850Nm of torque, the Audi RS6 GT will see off the 0-62mph sprint in 3.3secs. It hooks up instantaneously, hunkering down and spitting you out. Through corners, you can feel the outside rear wheel receiving the power and it again spits you out. It’s an immersive and addictive experience. It’s also a step up from the standard car; it feels like a final flex of considerable RS6 muscle.
Conclusion
Is it, however, the final flex? Audi changed its naming convention to be odd numbers ICE and hybrid, even numbers EV. It has since gone back on that owing to confusion amongst customers. It’s always good to admit you’ve made a mistake and it also opens up the door to future iterations of the RS6, name and all. What we can say, however, is that any future version will almost certainly be hybrid.
The Audi RS6 GT, then, is the final non-electrically assisted RS6. It emphatically draws a line under an impressive dynasty of genre-defining fast estates. Saloons and SUVs have all been more popular, but the appeal of the RS6 has endured. In GT guise, it would take up a worthy position in anyone’s fantasy garage.
One final word for the brakes. Their stopping power, with 17.3” discs at the front and 14.6” discs at the rear, damn near tear your face off. You can feel your eyes trying to escape their sockets, such is the ferocity with which they bring this two-tonne behemoth to heel. They’re an almighty get out of jail free card, although such is the precision on offer with the rest of the car, I’m unsure how you’d ever come unstuck driving on road. You’d have to be driving in a way which might invoke jail time to find the limit.
It is, in conclusion, probably for the best that the Audi RS6 GT is the final RS6 (at least as we know it). Such a fine way to sign off that it is, I don’t know how Audi could’ve sent their engineers back to the drawing board to come up with a better version. From the attention to the stopping power, it delivers a fittingly fine finale.