RICHARD LANE
Testing, testing
New RS6 special provides the sensory excitement to justify its obnoxious look
In the past 24 hours, we’ve had a oneof-660 Audi RS6 Avant GT delivered to
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Autocar HQ, Toyota has announced a run of laudably hardcore GR Supras and Alpina has been in touch to ask if we would like a go in the dreamy, last-of-the-line B3 GT. We appear to be living in the midst of a special-edition bonanza (no prizes for guessing why), and it’s an excellent thing. One day, most of these cars will have shed their ridiculous price tags and be spectacular used buys. The ‘special edition’ is a familiar ploy for shifting old metal, but do it well and icons can be born.
It will be particularly interesting to chart the RS6 GT’s value trajectory. We’re talking about a £180k estate here – one with manually adjustable dampers, which is of course what every family wagon needs. Madness. It also appears to have the most kerbable alloy wheels (white, too!) since Jay-Z’s Maybach Exelero. And I can’t have been the only one who thought that Audi had made a bit of a Horlicks of the design with the eyeballsearing IMSA GTO-inspired graphics. Yet when you see the thing in the metal, it works, having the aura not of a messily jazzed-up mega-estate but of a practical supercar. Special? Yeah, and then some. Genuinely good to drive, too.