621bhp Audi RS6 GT – £180k IMSA-Inspired V8 Estate

On top of an estate car you'd normally put a canoe or a bicycle, maybe a roof tent, but not on this one because there's no roof rails. There's just a really big wing because this is Audi's super wagon final boss, the Ultimate RS6. The GT is a limited edition RS6. Audi says it will build no more than 660 of these, 60 of which will come to the UK and once it's there you'll have to part with around £180,000 to own one. All that money and you can't even carry a bike on top. Let's get right to it then. The RS6 GT has new badges, new wheels, new livery, new carbon panels, new differentials, new suspension, new wing and no roof rails because putting anything on the roof would upset the aerodynamics. Now I was actually a bit nonplussed when I first saw the spec of this car because we know that tuners like Abt or Lichfield can easily pull 700, 800 horsepower out of this engine by just giving it a hard stare really, but for this, the ultimate love letter to the petrol RS6, the GT has the same 630 horsepower, 590 foot pounds of torque that you get in the bogo RS6 performance for 50 grand less. So it'll do 0-62mph in 3.3 seconds and keep right on going until it hits 190 and that is jolly fast but I don't know, I was expecting a bit more of that and less of a body kit. Okay, maybe that's harsh. There is more here than just a wing and a splitter. Here are the GT's killer details. Right, we'll start at the back because you've already seen the big wing. This has come from the RS6 GTO concept from a couple of years ago but they didn't carry over that car's best bit, the aero face wheels. Instead, the GT's got these 22-inch Avus design six spokers. I mean, they're okay but I don't know, I'm missing the dished effects that you got from the motorsport wheels. Speaking of motorsport, you get a livery and you have to have it. Coming to the UK, there'll be 20 in this heritage livery, then 20 in a grey and 20 in a black but you have to have a wrap with some graphics, you can't just have paint to sample. Come down here, you have carbon bonnet and carbon front wings here with a big vent there as well to get heat out of where the ceramic brakes live. These are standard. I hope that they're upgraded because Audi ceramic brakes, in my experience, quite easy to set on fire. And then, this is where the RS6 is just on full menace, isn't it? Here at the front, gloss black grille, vertical bladey things here, extended front splitter. It's always been just a deeply malevolent car to look at and it always had a great stance. The GTs should be a little bit better. You're really paying attention because this is actually 10mm lower than a normal RS6. It's on manually adjustable suspension, which is good news if you know your fast Audis because manually adjustable suspension, this suspension in fact, did wonders for the RS4 competition last year. And you even get that little tool with it in a padded box so you can live out your motorsport mechanic fantasies setting it up every morning. Speaking of motorsport, let's go have a look at this because this is the proper GT inspiration. Probably the coolest looking Audi of all time, the 90 Quattro IMSA GTO of the late 1980s. Having been thrown out of Can-Am Racing for destroying everyone with four-wheel drive, Audi decided to have a go at trolling the IMSA road race series instead, taking along a cartoon 90 saloon stretched widthways until it was probably impossible to overtake. Underneath it used the mechanical package from Audi's all-conquering Pikes Peak rally cars, a 2.2-litre five-cylinder engine and a monstrous turbo churning out a colossal 710 brake horsepower, which naturally went to all four wheels. Now at the time, Audi was a minnow in the United States. Its sales were dwarfed by the might of Mercedes and BMW. Plus a scandal that claimed its cars were accelerating unintentionally was threatening to derail its entire bid to conquer that crucial stateside market. So a silhouette racer with a flame-throwing exhaust punching through the passenger's door was just the good news story Audi needed. And the 90 IMSA did the job brilliantly, winning seven of the 13 races that season and coming achingly close to taking the overall title. If Audi hadn't missed the first couple of races due to engine testing and then blowing up engines a few times during the year, chasing even more power, this car would have gone down alongside the Quattro and the diesel Le Mans winners in Audi's all-time motorsport hall of fame. Ah, just look at this thing. It has to be one of the most cartoonish cars I've ever seen. Check out the exhaust here, just poking straight through the passenger door. Ironically enough actually, Hans-Joachim Stuck himself used to race this monster, said that when Audi first arrived in the States, they were mocked by their rivals for daring to take on their massive V8 with a pitiful 2.2-litre five-cylinder. I bet they weren't laughing for long. Of course these days, Audi is no stranger to a massive V8, but it is about to be. The next RS6 will be fully electric, as Audi makes all cars with an even number in their name e-trons, the Q4, the Q6 and so on, and though there will be a plug-in hybrid replacement for this RS6, confusingly it's going to be branded as an RS7 Avant. Still, that means that very fast Audis with very big boots are going to live on. And that is after all why we love fast estate cars, they're not just idiotically fast, you can also put a whole idiot in the boot, but there's nothing actually new in the boot of the GT, so let's go and get in the front. Right, that's a bit more comfortable, principally because finally got some good seats in an RS6. These make you sit a bit lower, they hug you in all the right places and they still feel comfortable. If you watch the film I did with the RS6 Performance last year, Meeting America's Biggest Wagon Enthusiast, it's a really good watch. I moaned about the seats in a normal RS6 feeling like they came out of a Foggo A3, these don't, which is good, but I think they must have been expensive. Audi blew the budget on these because there's nothing else that's new. Stenciled the number of your RS6 GT here, written GT on the floor mats and kind of left everything else alone. Shouldn't complain too much, this is a very nice interior, the screens work well, it's beautifully built, but it would have been nice if the sense of occasion of the outside was sort of matched in here and they've committed a screening crime. I and the RS6 on the display here is a normal one, that's not a GT, that's got roof rails. The ultimate big super estate car then? Well I'm quite looking forward to finding out once BMW finishes up that new M5 Touring. Until then, who's your money on?