LAST week I bought a Mexican three-bean wrap. The list of ingredients was 189 words long, plus various data on nutrition, packaging and recycling. It took longer to digest these contents than it did to eat them.
It was purchased on my way to Leicestershire to try Audi's RS6 Quattro Avant, its fastest and most powerful road car.
In its case, the list of ingredients is colossal, but the words that smack home, drilling the brains of the cognoscente and pub b
ores with awe, are but a few: power 580ps; 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds; top speed 155mph (or 175mph by choice); engine V10 twin-turbo.
Remember, this is an estate car. A saloon model follows in November.
Leicestershire was flush with spring blossom. Some of the ochre-washed houses are dripping with 18th-century coaching scenes. It was a quiet land more fitting for a pleasant cycle ride than evaluating this car, which would have been better set on the sparsely populated roads of Northumberland or the Great Glen or – just a thought – the Rest and Be Thankful hill, where the car's boasts could be tested (subject to permission, of course).
Cars as potent as the RS6 are rare. Audi notes that only a handful (Bentley GT Speed, Ferrari 599, Pagani Zonda F, Lamborghini Murcielago, and then four from Mercedes-Benz: the SLR, and AMG versions of the S, CL and SL models) are as powerful. Okay, time to have a lie down. All that adrenalin is tiring.
Yes, I am hedging. I don't know what to say that makes ownership of this car seem sensible. It costs £77,730, and that's before you have specified must-have options such as powered tailgate closure and white-wall tyres (surely well overdue for a comeback, with a reflective strip like Dutch bicycles).
I met a man with the previous 420ps V8 twin-turbo RS6. Actually, it's his wife's. She says she likes the power for overtaking. She is a competition driver. I said she should get a real driver's car such as the Evo or WRX, which would be far more effective in her neck of the hills.
She explained that her RS6 is not attention-grabbing like a Japanese supercar and thus, I paraphrase, could fly under the radar. It is a drab colour, without the strip-lit Las Vegas face applied to the successor. I had a car like that once. It was a dark blue estate car with small name badges (they actually said Nissan Bluebird) and it aroused not the slightest interest or envy. Well, this new RS6 is about as subtle as Jonathan Ross.
Like Ross, it does not look as clever as it is. Under the bulked-out body there is the familiar Audi four-wheel-drive system, now calibrated to send 60% of power to the back wheels (the old model was 50/50). This gives a better attitude on corners when you are pushing on. It has a six-speed automatic gearbox that lets you steer, brake and keep alert without the fuss of a gear lever. This is so much nicer than the faffy manual shift used by BMW in the M5, a car spoilt by its gear system.
Assessing the RS6 in sleepy Leicestershire and Rutland was always going to be a nonsense. Most of the roads had a maximum speed limit of 60mph. Audi had conscientiously identified the locations of speed cameras in the area.
That said, I did get it up to a shade over 90mph on the private drive to its launch HQ, robbed of the magic ton by having to slow for the entrance gates. How did it feel? Stable and fine, but a V10 engine does not have the satisfying rumble of a V8.
Easy to drive as an everyday car? A doddle, a real pussycat. What's the point? Search me. I would like to have the car for longer than a few hours to see what else crops up. I have some roads that are begging for an RS6. But then the debate in the Smallbore Bar swings to fuel consumption. This Audi will readily deliver atrocious economy figures but it can also beat 20mpg.
This brings me back to the RS6 owner mentioned earlier. She and her husband are by no means down to even their last half dozen cars, but are looking at fuel costs and avoiding journeys they would have, not long ago, made without a thought. (They also reported early trouble with defective, leaking dampers, covered mostly under warranty.)
One can't help thinking that the RS6 is magnificent but irrelevant, a "mine is faster than yours" crowd-puller. Audi makes very good diesel A6 models which are economical to use and near enough to the RS6 in pace to make no difference unless you are bothered about saving a few seconds and accept the risk of speeding fines.
Audi's insurers, by the way, will not let anyone with more than eight points on their licence drive its press demo cars. My passenger had to return to base without taking the wheel.
Vehicle Audi RS6 AvantPrice £77,730
Engine Twin-turbo 5.0 V10
Top speed 155mph (or 175mph factory setting)
0-60mph 4.4 seconds
Economy 20.2mpg
The full article contains 889 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
