Audi RS6 Avant Performance Review | The Best Car We’ll Never Have

Somewhere in the south of Spain, there's a place in the mountains called Istan. It's a quiet little village filled with tapas, sangrias and race car drivers. Because the only way in or out is through 7.8 miles of blind corners, narrow sweepers and challenging chicanes. But somehow the folks here do it every day in what seems to be economy hatchbacks at speeds I've only seen on a road course. The reason I'm here today is because this is the perfect place to find out how a car handles. And that car is none other than the 2018 Audi RS6 performance. I know this is the outgoing C7 generation and at some point soon we'll see its replacement. But my God, has this car aged well. Those wide body fenders, giant oval exhaust tips, and that beautifully aggressive front bumper. There's no badge to tell you that this is the performance version, which costs 27 grand more than the base RS6. But these titanium colored trim pieces and those gorgeous 15 spoke wheels are just subtle giveaways. The real difference is the engine. The base RS6 already makes 560 horsepower, but this performance model makes 605. That's more than a Lamborghini Huracan. But the most amazing thing is this. The fact it has five real seats in a trunk big enough to make most SUVs blush. It's a shame that this car never made it stateside. But we do have something similar. The RS7 performance. It's not as practical, but it's equally as fast. Let's get started, shall we? For a 4,500 pound luxury wagon, this thing can boogie. People say that the RS6 should be able to do 0.60 in 3.7 seconds. And the quarter mile 11.3. Which is fast by any measure. But what impresses me more is how this thing goes around corners. Yes, there is body rolling, especially when you throw into a corner like this. And there's no denying the physics. But this is probably the most planted I've ever felt in a car this heavy. The Hellcat, the GSF, the M850i, those guys have nothing on this car. This thing drives lighter than it actually is. And with Audi's Quattro system, you get this amazing all wheel drive. But the way it puts the power down makes it feel like it wants to oversteer. And that's a good thing. The steering feedback is also pretty on point. You know, it's pretty heavy. It's nice. It feels precise too. And that's because this car has the optional torque vectoring differential and continuously variable dynamic steering. Which probably explains why no matter what I do, it just hugs the road and goes. The system has two types of torque vectoring, one that sends power to the individual wheels and one that does the brake control. The result is supposedly a perfectly neutral cornering feel, but I still find that it goes towards oversteer just a hair when you really lean on it. The only option this car lacks is the ceramic brakes, but honestly I don't think it needs it. The feel from the standard setup is solid enough. The suspension is moderately stiff in dynamic mode, but it's totally manageable. None of that spine rattling TTRS or M2 competition race car stuff. But it's also not nearly as compliant as the M850i. Then again, I don't expect it to be. This is much more of a driver's car and despite this fantastic handling and massive 21 inch wheels, you can easily just throw this thing into comfort mode and go about your day like nothing happened. The seats are comfort nice and they hug you really well. I spent five hours driving through Spain yesterday and not once did I feel like I needed to get out. This thing will just eat the miles as a GT car and those miles will go by quickly because of how much fun you'll be having at the same time. We know the standard performance data, but let's see if we get a 40, 160, 130 time for our fast list today. If you're not familiar with the fast list, it's my in house database of acceleration times for all the cars I've been testing. And if you are familiar you'll know that I regret not getting a 61:30 time for the BMW M850i which is the last car I tested here. Luckily the tables have turned. I was able to find myself a nice little service road on the outskirts of town to do my runs. This is also the part where I should be telling you about how this is the best sounding stock exhaust in a four door car, but you probably already know that or you'll just argue with me about how the Hellcat Charger sounds better. Frankly, I'd rather let the car do the talking. We'll take it from a dead stop and try full auto first. My God, it's fast. Fast is right. I did do some manual runs but it ended up being almost a half second slower. So we'll do another full auto run just for fun. Man, that service road was something else, huh? Completely flat and nobody around for miles. Anyway, the Rs6 and the Rs7 share the same powertrain, so I think it's safe to assume that the RS7 performance will put down similar times. But let's take a look at those numbers together. 40100 happened in 5.6 seconds. Not too shabby. That's not as fast as the Hellcat, but faster than the new M850i, which kind of competes in the same price range. But a better metric for cars of this power level is the 60, 130. And the RS6 performance did that in 9.41 seconds. And according to the Internet, that's pretty close to what the old BMW F10 M5 does. It's also not as fast as their R8, but anything under 10 seconds is pretty respectable. It's weird because the RS6 feels a lot faster than that, almost like Z06 fast. And definitely a lot faster than the BMW M850i, at least in the 40 to 100 range, but my V box tells me otherwise. Either way, it's still a blast to drive. And I'm willing to bet that an intake tune exhaust would probably put this thing deep into seven second territory. Hopefully I'll be able to put that theory to the test someday. And that someday may really come, because rumor has it the CA generation might finally bring the Avant to the United States. Regardless, I couldn't have asked for a better weekend to drive this car. It's beautiful up here, and there's no other way to put it. The Audi RS6 performance is very pretty to look at, but it feels dated, especially coming from the new M850i. The cockpit is only half digital, the paddles are still made of plastic, and the steering wheel feels like it went on a hardcore diet. It doesn't matter though. I'm sure the new generation will fix all of that. And as of today, if I could only have one car in my garage, it would still be this Audi RS6 performance. It can take you to work every day, it'll carry you, your wife, two kids, two dogs and a weekend's worth of luggage shell you through any sort of inclement weather. And I'm willing to bet it'll run train on almost any car you'll meet on the road and even on the Track. But for 120 grand, I wouldn't expect anything less. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and thanks for watching. This car has Audi's legend. Oh my God, that's a bus. Jesus Christ. This is a blind at the blooper. Oh my. Oh, my God. What the hell is wrong with these people? This is like probably one of the craziest roads I've driven. There it is. Istan, the legendary city of race car driver.