pop quiz name a car with a tow bar that can do nearly 200 miles an hour no how about LD rs6
or in other words the fastest way to get a trailer tent to the Dorset Coast this is a car that offers
enormous practicality and even more enormous performance so reality what it is is just a very
big very fast hot hatch and that's the type of car that's incredibly popular in the UK it might
surprise you to hear then that the UK is actually an incredibly big market for the rs6 only its home
country of Germany buy four of these cars how do you replace a car like the rs6 well you could do
what all DS on here and just offer loads more of what made the old car so popular a bigger boot
more refinement more tech crucially more power and says Audi and even better driving experience right
let's get into some numbers first of all then we've got narrows down at 600 litres in the boot
we've got 600 horsepower under the bonnet and 800 Newton metres of torque all of that goes through
an 8-speed automatic gearbox and Quattro all-wheel drive like the standard a6 and a7 this car
features all-wheel steering unlike those cars it has a Quattro sport very differential all of that
of course is designed to help put that absolutely monstrous amount of power and torque onto the road
now such this car can crack nought to 62 in 3.6 seconds there were two chassis setups for this
car one of which and adaptive steel suspension the other which an hour suspension setup we only get
the latter in the UK which given how firm this is even on quite forgiving Californian roads
I'm quite glad that we only get the air set up since filming Aldi has decided to offer both
chassis options in the UK although they still set up is very firm it does give the rs6 a kind
of agility completely unbefitting of a two-ton estate so the choice is yours that's because on
top of everything that this car offers in terms of performance and it's big boot and it's base
of five and all the rest of it what this needs to be able to do really well is work as a daily
car the performance is a bit of a given really what's really surprising is just how quiet and
comfortable this is new for this car is a 48 volt motor hybrid system it's the first time an Audi
rs6 has been electrified like that not only of course is this out with economy of also refinement
particularly the active cylinder on-demand system in this car I mean you can coast along using only
half the engine with unite in durable power or in fact none of it at all thanks that 48 Baltimore
system breaks in this car that we're driving are incredibly strong maps cos they're the optional
carbon ceramic s-- if you want to unlock the very highest top speed of this car which is 189
miles an hour or why you would you have to get the carbon ceramics with that it's kind of a middling
speed that you can unlock in between the two or there's the standard hundred and fifty five mile
an hour top speed which frankly given our roads is probably more than fast enough can understand it
if you lived in Germany and you use the Autobahn quite frequently why you would want that near 200
mile an hour top speed but in the UK it's really unexpected you want to show off and that kind of
begs me neatly onto the exterior styling of this car which is kind of a bit more divisive this
time around previous incarnations of the rs6 have really looked although quite a bit more
sportiveness down the card not a million miles away from in terms of design this car however
is almost completely new it's only really things like the doors and the roof that remain from the
old car and that means that it does have quite a different look to a standard a6 now I imagine
that's going to appeal to a certain type of buyer but surely part of the rs6 is appeals that it
wasn't too showy you could kind of deep budget and people wouldn't be too sure what you were driving
Howdy's engineer said they've reworked the chassis they start to make this car lot more fun to drive
the old car was obviously incredibly fast and this one's not really much different to that but what's
very different this time around it's just quite how keenly this thing turns it it's of course out
by the rear steering and the death there's that huge amount of mid corner grip that you get from
the Quattro or Drive system and then an enormous amount of power on the exit of the corner as well
rear-wheel steering is really bizarre if you just feel it just off the center of the steering there
you can really feel it kind of wiggling the back end of the car um it means that while there is a
little bit of a flat spot there in the middle of a steering where not a lot happens it does
speed up incredibly quickly just dr. Fenton I think there's also never really that bothered
about the handling of the old car because I'm not taking my Audi rs6 on the track really all
it needs to do is be incredibly fast day to day and very comfortable as well what's nice this time
is it that means it just adds another dimension of appeal to this car doesn't ring up that many
rivals to stock up against when you look at what else is available it's really only a Mercedes AMG
c63 I guess a Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo there's not much around this this sort of size
and this little power come to the actual driving feel of this car I mean while they've changed a
lot to make it a lot more agile and to handle a lot better it's still kind of classic fast Audi
I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing because obviously this attracts a certain type
of buyer and you don't alienate all these people when you bring out the new version of the car the
biggest difference really it's just how agile this car feels and that's of course down to
that active rear-wheel steering you can really feel the rear axle kind of pushing you around
the corner it's not just a case of the back end of this course or following the front round the
corner burner - is a very long car you can really feel the effect of that variable steering and he
says there's kind of a bigger bandwidth this time between the comfort mode and the sporty mode it
certainly fills it in this most sporty mode on this road it's incredibly firm it's a train of
thought that there's a remarkable lack of roll when you go into a corner bonum on this is a big
heavy car turn it in you'd expect it to roll quite a lot it just doesn't it's obviously much bigger
differentiation this time around with this rs6 and the rest of the a6 range in the previously
you could get s6 which is kind of like a detuned rs6 this time around of course that car features
diesel engine that means there's now a massive gap really and what's offered by the s6 and the
rs6 the s6 has kind of become the real day-to-day car that you could use everyday and it's not going
to cost you a million pounds to fill up every time you go to the petrol station whereas this car is
almost elevate it to another level above that few clues in the cabin that you're not driving just
a standard everyday a6 or the fact that I will see Rob alcântara Club will these new aluminium
kind of feel shift pebbles and much better than the plastic ones in the old car everything else
though benefits from the same excellent interior you get the a6 so you get the massive screen you
get the secondary screen there for your climate controls you know the early digital dials as well
which in this I've got a RS specific layout which is kind of a white on black that's really easy to
spot another new feature this time around is the RS mode button on the wheel here that we've seen
in other fast Audi cars that allows you to change which driving range room without hands of reach
around and sort fit around them down here on the centre console it's kind of like what we've seen
in fast BMWs actually you get RS 1 and RS 2 mode you can tailor each one depending on exactly what
it is that you want now I started this video by saying to you that this is kind of like a
big powerful hot hatch and you might that that's on thought what earth is this man talking about
the thing is though all of that chassis tech means that you kind of drive this thing like a
big front wheel drive hole hat you've just got so much confidence just to stick it into a corner and
know that there's gonna be enough grip the only difference really being the absolutely enormous
amount of power that you've got to accelerate away obviously despite its enormous appeal this
is still a bit of a niche this car and that means that the buyers of it hold quite a lot of power
and it comes to what happens with the next car as such oddly said this asked its customers this time
around what they wanted at the rs6 so you've ended up with things like cool Super Sport bucket seats
which the old God didn't have you can also get a tow bar on both sha C's now and as I said earlier
up to that remarkable top speed of hundred eighty nine miles an hour what's really interesting
though is the fact that unlike the s6 which has got a radically different engine that before this
car still uses a four litre twin-turbocharged v8 that's great news really because it's got an
enormous amount of character it sounds fantastic it's got a huge amount of torque from the get-go
you don't really ever feel like you need to shift out and you can just sort of lean on third gear
out of a corner and know that there's always going to be a bit boost to carry through that means this
car features a huge amount of ease of use really whether you're in the cockpit mode kind of often
about or whether you're in our s1 or rst on a fast and windy road like this either way it's a
really easy thing to drive now I should indulge a slightly geeky observation why said earlier about
this having an 8-speed automatic gearbox that means it's not a dual clutch automatic gearbox
well that's not exactly the end of the world it doesn't mean that there's a crispness in the
gearshift at this car kind of luxe you drive one of our these slightly less powerful cars like an
rs3 that does have a dual clutch gearbox and it it really kind of whips through the gears this
there's a kind of a delay between the pull of the paddle and a gear shift now well that's not the
end of the world and it is certainly a lot better than the old rs6 it does lend a kind of slightly
lazy driving style to this car doesn't mean you are a little bit more reliant on that engine's
enormous amount of talk to Paulie Ralph corner rather than down shifting and getting into the
peak of its powerful that's a bit of a shame really because when you rev this engine out
it sounds absolutely fantastic this might seem Astarte odd thing to say but I was genuinely a
little bit worried when Howard he said they've made this car so much better to drive generally
speaking if you make a car better to drive if you make it harder to live with day to day and in my
opinion that's called what this car is all about perhaps let me know in the comments if I'm wrong
but I don't think anybody's taking their Audi rs6 on a racetrack what this car needs to do is
be incredibly comfortable and refined day today and then explosively fast when you come across
a road like this what's great is that this time around through the deployment of some incredibly
clever technology howdy has managed to improve both ends of the rs6 spectrum this is a car that
would now be incredibly easy to live a day to day while keeping pace with its more dynamic rivals