Being a journalist today, it's easy to gloss over obscene horsepower numbers. I drove a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 last week, which has 640 horsepower. Then, I drove a Mercedes CL63 AMG with 518 horsepower. And now, Audi has released information on their RS6 Avant, a station wagon with 580 horsepower.
Are you paying attention? Five hundred eighty horsepower. Dude.
I remember when it seemed ludicrous that a GTI was available with a 172-hp VR6. A six-cylinder in a Golf? Almost two hundred horsepower? How silly!
Well, if that was silly, the RS6 is stupid. We're not complaining, of course. The 5.2-liter, 435-hp V-10 in the S6 wasn't enough, so Audi put two turbochargers on it (and redesigned a few components). The resulting 580 horses are accompanied by equally insane torque - 479 lb-ft of it.
What, 479 lb-ft of torque doesn't sound insane enough to you? How about this: it's available from 1500 rpm to (you're sitting, right?) 6250 rpm. And at that point, the horsepower peaks - and it continues to peak until 6700 rpm.
The result is that the six-speed Tiptronic wagon can sprint to 62 mph in 4.6 seconds and 125 mph in 14.9. With only 7.7 pounds for every horse to accelerate, we think that estimate is conservative. The RS6 is the most powerful street-going Audi of all time.
It's also the most powerful grocery-getter on the planet. I hope Audi has an available rubber mat to make cleanups in the cargo area easy. One errant twitch of the driver's right foot will scramble eggs, mash potatoes, and, if it's positioned properly, even help extricate the last drop of ketchup from a Heinz bottle.
That's if the suspension doesn't break the bottle first. The RS6's suspension is upgraded from the S6 (which rides like an ox cart), and offers optional three-stage damping. Like the RS4, it sends sixty percent of available torque to the rear wheels, and features Dynamic Ride Control, which helps minimize pitching and rolling by diagonally connecting the wheels. And like in the RS4, the RS6's stability control can be put in sport mode or switched off completely
If the groceries survive the acceleration or cornering loads, the brakes will surely finish them off. The RS6 is available with carbon-ceramic rotors that measure a positively insane 16.5 inches front, 14.0 inches rear. Those front rotors necessitate twenty-inch wheels, which are shod with 275/35 tires (the standard nineteen-inch wheels wear 255/40 tires).
The RS6 Avant is easily recognizable. Apart from the food splattered all over the insides of the windows, it has fog lights integrated into the headlight assembly (they blocked too much airflow in the air dam, so they needed to be moved), squared-off fender flares inspired by the Ur-Quattro, and three exclusive colors: Sepang Blue, Monza Silver, and Monterey Green.
Audi says the RS6 Avant isn't coming to the U.S., but it cleverly avoids talking about the sedan. The four-door should show up next year, and since Americans haven't yet figured out that wagons are infinitely cooler than the sedans upon which they're based, we're predicting we'll see the RS6 sedan here before you can say "too many horses under the hood."