What Went Wrong? The "New" Audi RS6 Driven On UK Soil At Last!

hello everybody this is the apparently still new audi rs6 two years ago i attended the launch of this car and had one of the most memorable trips of my life however in the intervening two years nobody seems to have bought one now for the first time since i drove the car in 2020 i've been able to get my hands on one and see what it's all about on my home roads and i'm asking the question what went wrong [Music] my first and last drive of this generation rs6 was two years ago almost to the day now i received a call a couple of weeks earlier from audi saying james would you like to come and join us on the launch of the new rs6 i couldn't say yes quick enough because it involved not just driving a brand new fast audi always enjoyable but a trip to one of my favorite places in the world germany a country that i love not just for its roads and they said james you've got two options we can either fly you out there you can enjoy the car and fly back or we can deliver the car to you a day early you can drive it all the way down to the black forest and then you can attend the launch and we'll take you to the nekosaurum factory and do a few other nice things well what could be better than that well i tell you what could be better get in the car dropped off two days earlier so by the time we were attending the launch we'd in fact live with it for 48 hours and had the most amazing time because we really did thoroughly test this car i would say of any launch i've ever been on this was by far the most comprehensive we had rain we had sleet we had proper snow and perhaps the most memorable bit the bit that will stick in my mind for a long time the light was just about still with us and the roads suddenly cleared we decided it was a good opportunity to see just how well this car would perform on the autobahn naturally music choice is important so i put on push it to the limit from the scarface soundtrack and we did indeed find that this car really was limited to 174 mile an hour because that speed we hit it is to date the fastest i have ever gone in a car it felt totally safe sensible normal and it was an absolute right really fond memory and i'm thankful to audi and my friend james for accompanying me on that trip though it wasn't a perfect car and certainly had some flaws there was still an awful lot to like about it and the rs6 has always been a car that offers a near unique combination of talents all generations have had a thunderous engine up front here's no different a twin turbocharged four liter v8 pushing out 600 metric horsepower 800 newton meters of torque that's about 590 pound-feet in old money that's mated to an automatic gearbox here the venerable eight-speed zf audi's evergreen quattro all-wheel drive system meaning you can get that power to the ground all the time and it's packaged in this very practical estate or as audi call it event guys over the years the rs6 has been occasionally available in other body styles but the event is the only one that's seen service all the way through i have driven now several generations of rs6 i have yet to experience the first c5 which in its day was a legendary car for its tune ability and also the lack of durability from its gearbox the next c6 generation introduced the ludicrous twin turbocharged v10 and although even audi themselves would tell you it's more of a straight line machine than a b-road blaster it has a charm all of its own and if you can put up with it it is highly entertaining then the c7 generation car the one that preceded this is one of my all-time favorite petrol head dailies that glorious combination of practicality savage speed but also a drive that can still put a smile on your face and then you have this there's a lot to like about it yet in the last two years i think i've spotted only two in the wild then there's a lot of things i'm sure you could try and blame for that you could blame brexit you could blame covid you could blame the semiconductor shortage but the fact is there are plenty of other cars out there that should be a lot rarer i've seen quite a few more of the ferrari f8 i've seen about half a dozen the new roma i've seen about three or four of those i've even seen more db x's in the wild then i have rs6s and as for urus well i think i've seen about 10 times as many of those as i have these so what is going on the looks were certainly controversial when the car was launched there are a lot of people who didn't like this new bold out-there styling preferring instead the more understated aggression of the previous cars i can totally get that but i have to say i think this really suits audi's new more angular styling language very well the arches front and rear are quite pronounced and it means you're unlikely to miss one of these out on the road particularly in this gorgeous shade of tango red one of the things i didn't like about the new rs6 was the introduction of trim levels previously if you wanted an rs6 you simply bought an rs6 and if you wanted more on it there were individual options however in the last few years regulations have changed and that meant that offering individual options on these cars does become a little bit tricky so audi introduced trim levels and there were several available at launch so there was the common launch edition there was also the base rs6 then the carbon black and finally the four sprung in the interim there's also been a nagaro edition and there may even be different versions around the world too this to me is very confusing as far as i'm concerned all you should really need is the base level rs6 and then the top of the tree for sprung that'll be simple and in some ways that's how it works but there is a problem back in 2020 we spent the majority of our time in the launch edition car and we felt that it didn't really seem to justify its hundred thousand pound price tag there was a lot of stuff in the car that felt like it was missing the materials didn't seem to be of the standard you'd expect for a car that price point so on and so forth we then got to try the four spring trim which is another 25 000 pounds or so but the car we drove was fully loaded having the optional 9 000 carbon ceramics and everything and that car was totally different it felt magnificent the leather was different the feel of it was different everything about it just seemed to be a step above and we came out of that feeling like that was the car you had to buy if you wanted an rs6 however here in britain things don't seem to be quite as simple because the cars here and the options available aren't the same as those we drove in germany so the top spec bno sound system with the little pop-up tweeters like you used to get on the aston martins that you get in europe here you don't in fact go on audi's configurator and you'll still see those little pop-up tweeters in a four-spring car but look an auto trader none of them have it the optional upgraded milano leather i don't think is available at all even the navara blue that many of the launch cars came with a stunning shade isn't available and that leaves me feeling like the four sprung here is rather poor value for money and audi should have just put everything into all the cars because there's lots of little things that you get with the four spring like a heads up display you can't get with any other trim level yet it's a lot of extra money to pay for only a small few things you're going to notice the most significant thing you get with the four spring trim now over any of the others is audi's sport suspension plus the regular cars like this carbon black edition have air ride but the four sprung has a more traditional setup with springs and dampers and audi's dynamic ride control in germany it worked very well on the autobahn we felt it was absolutely fine but here in britain i'm not sure i'd want anything other than this because the regular air ride actually works quite well on our lumpy bumpy roads the interior of the car was for me always a bit of a mixed bag i have warmed to the overall shape and design of it even if it is mercilessly germanic everything you touch does feel rather high quality although some of the materials in here aren't as good as they should be so you've scratchy plastic here the airbag cover similarly just doesn't look very nice and all this piano black stuff is lovely but it'll get fingerprints over it as soon as you get the car out the garage the twin touch screen thing here is now very common but something i've never liked wherever you found it the problem is that while i understand the need for a touch screen up top for android auto apple carplay so on and so forth there is no reason at all to make your hvac controls also a touchscreen to operate them you must therefore take your eyes off the road and that to me is both daft and dangerous to say nothing of being very unintuitive what's wrong with basic dials for the most important controls in your car it always seems silly to me that cars now are legislated to have all this safety kit in them yet you still need to take your eyes off the road to adjust the cabin temperature i don't get that there is still a lot to love about the car though these super sport seats are very nice very comfortable just about supportive enough although not the best in business the steering wheel though i absolutely love always having modern audis far better than the chunky item that bmw seemed to love fitting and the virtual cockpit up here although it's getting on a bit now is still pretty much the best in business but here's the big problem and the tragedy for me of the rs6 in europe you have something called audi exclusive it does technically exist here too but almost nobody seems to know or care about it while we were on the rs6 launch we got to check out some of the cars used by the exclusive department as a sort of demonstration of what they can do and they were absolutely incredible they felt not just one or two but three steps above anything else i've ever seen from audi here in the uk i find it personally really disappointing that a car like this a top flight in some ways flagship car costing over a hundred thousand pounds has less customization available to it than a bmw one series you've got about half a dozen colors to choose from there are technically four colors for the interior but let's be honest here nearly everybody is going to go with the black and when everything else in here is black black black black black and you've got only the occasional bit of aluminium to break it up it does mean these cars all look just a touch monolithic and very samey and that to me really is disappointing i think this is a very uk specific thing because i get so many people getting in touch with me now when they're buying cars all they're interested in is what is the easiest spec to sell on nobody cares anymore about building something that's personal that's individual that stands out they want everything to be a cookie cutter and that's a shame and when it comes to cars like this you should have a little bit of individual flair you should be able to do something a little bit different because believe me if you're brave enough to do that you're going to have a car that everybody wants to buy beyond a couple of color choices for the seats the only real option available to uk customers is the full lever for the dash and door tops that i would say is absolutely essential and a thousand pounds actually a fairly good value option because it really does lift the interior in more good news this car has decent room for passengers in the back excellent boot space this one also has the panoramic sunroof it opens at the front and still gives some light to passengers in the back as well it's an absolute essential the car also has the comfort and sound pack pretty much the only option box anyone is ever likely to take with one of these cars that's three thousand pound and comprises chiefly three things you get the 360 degree camera absolutely essential the mid-level bno sound system which is pretty decent and keyless entry it's so important to have that if you do spec it it will actually increase the residual value of your car on the finance application paper performance is predictably impressive with a naught to 60 time of the hang on a minute when supercars doing that 10 years ago variety and a top speed if you spec the optional ceramics of 186 and that's still limited this generation of car also saw the introduction of four-wheel steer making it much more entertaining on a tight alpine pass and also much easier to drive in the car park at waitrose so as you can tell i do have a few gripes with the car but none of them are a deal breaker time then i suppose to refamiliarize myself with how it drives it would appear that when it comes to testing the new rs6 i don't really ever have much luck with the weather the last time i drove one in germany we awoke to find ourselves surrounded by snow and today is the driest day the whole week i've had this car and we've only got this because the storm that arrived yesterday blew all the rain away and has dried the roads does me know that i have to be extra vigilant today because there have been a lot of downed trees and things like that so i'm going to be very cautious i've done a scouting run on this road earlier and it should be okay the worst of the wind was a little while ago yet still i am actually without power at home so i haven't been able to do all of the research i would have liked to on this car including re-watching my old video there were a few things about that car i remember not liking however here and now there's also an awful lot to like and that includes surprisingly for an audi the steering the previous car was on winter tires and to be honest it's been over two years since i drove it and i can't remember precisely how i felt about it curiously they are hand cooks and i've seen these fitted now to a few fast audis i can't help but wonder how some customers might feel at looking at these hundred thousand pound 600 horsepower practical supercars and thinking why have audi fitted kooks that does seem like an oddly cheap thing to do i don't think there's anything wrong with the tyre in fact from my experience it's actually very good very versatile but even still i think people would have an expectation of a premium brand tyre on such a premium car as this and hang kook good as they may be just doesn't qualify whichever way you cut it either in a straight line or point to point this is a very quick car the air ride suspension works really well here in britain soaks up the lumps and bumps but it's the steering feel which is actually an unexpected surprise there isn't much texture coming back through the helm but the waiting of it is absolutely spot on and currently driving the car in its auto drive mode haven't even engaged any of the other drive settings and it's really quite delightful the gearbox in automatic works well enough and if you smooth with the throttle progress is very easy and very brisk naturally there are quite a few different ways to configure the car and with the rs6 you also have an rs1 and rs2 mode the rs modes change the look of the display up here there's a few different things you can customize including the quattro sport differential and in rs2 mode you can also enable a sport setting for the traction control as conditions are actually good enough out there today it's reasonably warm and dry i'm going to be using that to be honest with you this is about the best road condition i've actually driven an rs6 in so i'm reasonably comfortable with how the car will behave when traction isn't excellent it's little sections like this where that rear steer really comes into its own some stuff even cars a lot smaller than this can be a little bit tricky to successfully maneuver around there here no problem whatsoever i think it's not even unfair to say that this car has a level of dartiness that's approaching ferrari-like at some moments too that rear steer is easily one of the biggest changes audi have made to this car and i have to say it was absolutely worth it the engine certainly doesn't lack for firepower but compared with the outgoing c7 doesn't sound the best it's okay has a bit of a subulber's pod racer like thrum about it in some circumstances sounds almost like a sporty diesel rather than a highly strung petrol unfortunately one of the issues i have with filming this car is that i believe they haven't got a crossover in the exhaust system that means that when you have the exhaust cam on the back it's only hearing sort of half of the exhaust pulses and that's why these sound a little bit more agricultural on camera than they do in person the fact is it's not a particularly loud car even in its most vocal setting so you get a little bit of meatiness out of it but generally speaking from outside you don't even know it's there to some i'm sure that'll be a good thing and to others a great disappointment i've never been particularly fond of overly loud exhausts so that's not a real concern for me what is though is the way they've calibrated the engine and gearbox like i said when you're driving along in full auto mode letting the car do its thing it's absolutely fine however there are a couple of things about this engine and gearbox that i really don't like and i have a bit of a conspiracy theory about this you see i've noticed with a lot of manufacturers when we changed all the rules in 2018 many of them who seem to be making these really lovely responsive turbocharged engines that felt almost naturally aspirated paired with really snappy responsive gearboxes all suddenly forgot how i have pulled a few of these companies up on this and said guys what's going on here your engine is laggy your gearbox isn't responsive what are you doing and they've all kind of said to me rather sheepishly well we don't know what you're talking about it's brilliant it's wonderful look at the numbers it's still really really fast and yeah it is if you absolutely stab the throttle from nothing and expect it to go it will but if like myself you enjoy finessing your car through the corners you want to work the machine as it were this isn't so great allow me to demonstrate so up shift click there's the gear change that's not so bad but a downshift click there's the change how slow is that for a modern gearbox listen downshift click there's the shift the up shifts in here are better in fact i'd say the up shifts in here are acceptable the last car i drove with this same problem was the bmw 540i and that was the opposite downshifts were okay but up shifts criminally slow that being said the engine doesn't particularly care which gear you're in when it finally comes on boost it's more responsive than i recall but it also seems to be a little bit lethargic at lower rpm again we've got the car about 2000 rpm put foot down there's all the pull not devastating but also i'm pretty certain not the precise unit that the old c7 was i think what audi have done is turned up the boost and that way they managed to improve the emissions fuel economy and everything else but it's come at the cost of a little bit of that engine's response even the cars that audi have fitted with their fancy electric compressor that's supposed to keep the turbo spinning all the time have not really impressed me the lot of paperwork about technology that doesn't really seem to do what it says on the tin and i don't for one second believe this is audi's engineers being incompetent they are anything but i just think these are sacrifices made in the name of trying to meet incredibly difficult emissions legislation moving on from that despite its size the car is really easy to place you feel comfortable with it extremely quickly traction as you might expect is absolutely ridiculous flipping aura this is a fast car a seriously fast car i know that the motoring press is currently obsessing over the new m5 and the m5cs in particular unfortunately i have no relationship with bmw despite continued efforts so it's going to be a long time before i think i'm going to be able to drive one of those if you're watching this video and you do happen to have one and you're happy for me to have a go please do drop me an email my address is in the description of every video if you want an a to b machine that can actually show a golf r a clean set of heels this is it there's not a lot i think that can claim to do that but this really can on a day like today your average super supercar driver is probably going to be absolutely cacking themselves or more than likely your average supercar owner is going to be out in their rs6 because that's by far the most sensible car to actually take out on a day like today with the weather that we currently have [Music] a nice little pop there from the exhaust it does try every now and again and i have to say i don't hate it the stereo in here is pretty decent too the lack of a hud really is a disappointment not a fan of the alcantara wheel but i believe leather is available which trim pack you have to specify for that i don't know this car i think i mentioned is the carbon black and this exact one is about 107 000 pounds if you're absolutely desperate for the ultimate in performance you can of course specify those rather expensive ceramic brakes but these enormous steel items actually do their job very well i have to say when i first saw the spec sheet for the new rs6 and i realized that pretty much all of them are going to come on 22 inch wheels my first thought was how is the ride in that car going to be even remotely decent i actually got a chance to sit down and talk with one of the chassis engineers when i did the launch of this car and i said to them how do you guys feel about these enormous wheels and his response was very typically german and he said to me well it's very simple you see 21 inches was the smallest wheel that we could fit on this car which would actually clear the brakes that we wanted to use and everybody always wants an upgrade wheel ergo 22s what audi have done with this car and a number of others is they've increased the rolling radius of the whole thing so if you were to stick 22s on say an old 911 or something like that there wouldn't be any space for any rubber but here there's actually still a fairly healthy amount of sidewall despite the massive rim overall then a car of many fine qualities why then is it that so few have found a home here in britain first off people really are going for the suv thing like never before and now we have a huge amount of performance suvs to choose from a huge stack of them in fact the virtues of an estate car will always be clear to us petrol heads but let's be honest in the school run bingo a car like this will certainly lose against even a far lesser but bigger item then you've got the fact that these cars have now more or less all past the hundred thousand pound mark whilst in real terms they may not be that much more expensive than they ever were that's a big psychological barrier and a lot of money to spend my friends at charles and dean ran a finance quote for me on one of these i used a figure of around 110 000 pounds that'd be a very generously specified car with 10 percent as a deposit so 11 000 pounds in over a 36 month term the payments worked out at over 1500 pounds this makes it at least as expensive as if not more than your equivalent aston martin ferrari or porsche at the same price point and that means it's going to be a pretty hard sell one of these is going to cost you the same as an r8 and i think people would be happier paying that amount for an r8 than they would one of these on top of that audi's decision to go to trim levels and packs of this car i think has really confused things the fact is there are so few options to choose i don't know why they bothered giving you any but they should have done is with the top level cars giving you everything that you could possibly ever want and they just don't hear i am sure there are excellent reasons for this somebody out of the uk will have looked at their market and gone yeah yeah people here don't really care about that but i think that they do or certainly enough of them do to have made a difference the extremely limited amount of paints and interior combinations too mean that there isn't really an awful lot of incentive to go and buy a new car because it's not like if you buy a new one you can do pretty much anything you like well it is like that only people don't realize that and people here don't tend to bother doing that everybody wants the safe nice boring car that they can easily sell on and so people are only ever going to go for the boring basic safe combination something a bit like this which has got enough options in it not a fan of all the black trim that comes with the carbon black i'm really not it just looks a little bit um faux gangstar for me but um the rest of the car i really do like and i'd probably have one as a daily driver if it wasn't for the fact that that finance amount is more than my ferrari and my maserati combined that's how expensive this car would be i just can't justify that that'd double my monthly outgoings and unfortunately i'm pretty certain that at the end of your finance term you're not going to have a lot of money left in this i know people think that all of us youtubers have unlimited resources but we don't while i don't mind spending a bit on a car i don't really want to lose 40 or 50 000 quid on something as quote unquote ordinary as an rs6 the fact is this is actually an extraordinary car but i don't think audi really knew how to sell it to people anyway thanks to you for watching hope you found this video enjoyable please like comment down below subscribe if you haven't already and i'll see you for the next one bye [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: JayEmm on Cars

Views: 89,711

Keywords: Diary, VLOG, Car, Sound, Test, video, Review, Comparison, JayEmm on Cars, RS4, RS66

Id: fjvqhMOVTm4

Length: 26min 31sec (1591 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022