Scaling peak fast wagon | PH Footnote
The run-out Audi RS6 GT isn't perfect. It's just perfect enough
Last month, when fiddling with the personal Rubik’s cube that is £100k Garage - a concept still kicked around the PH office like an old party balloon - the C7 Audi RS6 Avant cropped up as a serious contender for my 'daily' spot. It has obvious advantages, of course, being a very good-looking, well-made and nicely-proportioned modern estate car, one equipped with a hard-charging and great-sounding 4.0-litre V8. And while it’s possible to debate its secondhand values, it seems like quite a lot of car for the £45k that buys you a low-mile one.
The chief argument against the C7 is the same argument that has been made against an entire generation of Audi-badged performance cars: it isn’t, by nature or design, a particularly scintillating steer. That’s because its maker intended it to be both very fast and very safe. The enlivening feeling of being close to the ragged edge or goaded on by feedback was never in the car’s vocabulary, which was a problem for some when the RS6 was new and taking up the only space on the driveway. Much less so, I'd argue, when it’s imaginary and being propped up (in this scenario) by a nearly new Toyota GR86 and a fairly ropey Land Rover Discovery 4.
I mention this because the subsequent C8 generation of RS6 was charged with carrying much the same torch. Whatever its shortcomings, buyers liked the C7 very much and it seemed like Audi Sport was merely required to push the button marked ‘more of the same’. But for various subjective and even ambiguous reasons, the replacement was not quite as persuasive. Probably it had something to do with it being a mild hybrid when this was still a fairly novel concept (one that ran counter to the old car’s consumptive swagger) or that its increase in technical sophistication arrived with no commensurate uptick in real-world charisma. Being markedly less appealing to look at did it no favours either.
At great expense, the run-out GT version presented the obvious chance to fix some of these shortcomings. Prudently, and mercifully, it features no additional power (630hp is ample), but it gets a design inspired by the ’89 IMSA GTO race car and a stiffer chassis underwritten by the prospect of manually adjustable coilover suspension. Audi says it has adjusted the rear diff, too, and fitted the very latest Continental Sport Contact 7 tyres - although if you ever encounter one in real life (60 were allocated to the UK) you’ll find it much easier to fixate on the enormous 22-inch wheels and the way the steroidal body is lowered 10mm to meet them.
Probably it needs a brave buyer to spec the Arkona White finish and Audi Sport decals, but doing so goes a long way to fixing the C8’s slightly weird look - probably because there’s so much black concealer at the front, and its carbon fibre wings tend to draw your eye rearward. By the time mine had got to the new diffuser and oversized roof spoiler, I was won over. And so, it seems, is the Great British public (or the male half anyway) which turns its attention to the GT with roughly the sort of response rate that the royal carriage gets. Thank goodness we insisted on driving it again on UK roads. We might never have guessed.
Unusually, I got in the car about five seconds from the A34 with a 70-mile, all-motorway journey home to contend with. It is basically Matt Bird’s house to mine and it is about as interesting and as spiritually fulfilling as a pint of tap water. It is also as close to a commute as I get these days, and therefore is usually driven unthinkingly (unless thinking about tea counts). But the GT did make me think. It made me think that I wouldn’t mind if Matt Bird lived in Ullapool and me, Tintagel. This is hardly the first Audi to seem well-suited to life in the outside lane, but believe me when I tell you that the special edition RS6 harmonises with it so convincingly that you actually start feeling delighted to be there, ploughing a warm furrow in the cold air.
On the one hand, this is certainly the coilovers working their inimitable magic. I drove our long-term CLE 53 to meet Matt Bird, a thoroughly pleasant and long-legged car against most backdrops. But the GT made it seem about as dynamically consistent as a Trump cabinet pick. On presumably whatever the factory settings are, the car manages the trick of hugging the ground with the assuredness of a steamroller while somehow levitating fluidly and forgivingly above it. The uniformity of its response and the sensation of unending vertical control would be deeply admirable in isolation, but when (on the other hand) there is the distant snarl of turbocharged V8, the close-up softness Alcantara and the underlying solidity of a car assembled mostly by hand at Böllinger Höfe, you do start having the kind of kittens that say: I could drive this car endlessly, happily.
The sense of reverie is so strong, in fact, that it hardly comes as a surprise to learn that the car can’t keep it up. The GT is very good everywhere else, too - but not quite so tangibly great. Mostly this is to do with the steering, which (characteristically) can’t hope to live up to the chassis’s verve, and for the most part doesn’t even try: either because the progressive electric rack has no nuance to give or Audi has no interest in unearthing it (probably it’s the latter). And while it seems to churlish to call out the firmed-up suspension without taking the time to manually play around with its settings, the GT’s secondary ride is not quite as masterly as its primary - a fact you discover anywhere in the UK that isn’t a smooth stretch of motorway. Which is pretty much everywhere.
So another big, dumb brute, right? Well, yes and no. Clearly, you still wouldn’t buy it for suckling the last morsel of fun from a B road or blending in anywhere, Q-car style. But perhaps it would seem wrong, right at the death, for the last (proper) RS6 to shoulder barge its way into the BMW M3 wagon’s territory anyway. Probably it is enough that the GT goes a very long way to remedying the C8’s original sins: it now looks great and, at big speeds and in the right place, has all the nous needed to charm your pants off. Possibly it’s a shame that £175k is required to access this end-of-level likability, but on the basis that the outgoing model has been a six-figure prospect virtually since launch, it seems redundant to quibble with the asking price - especially given the GT’s exclusivity. For anyone organising their £1m garage, this is the continent-crushing wagon I would recommend.
SPECIFICATION | AUDI RS6 AVANT GT
Engine: 3,993cc V8, twin-turbocharged
Transmission: eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 630@6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 627@2,300-4,500rpm
0-62mph: 3.3 seconds
Top speed: 189mph (limited)
Weight: 2,075kg
MPG: 18.5-19.5
CO2: 289-277g/km
Price: £176,975
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