Audi RS6 GT review

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Audi’s line of ICE-powered performance estates goes out with a bang

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If you had stepped out onto the spotlessly clean floor of Audi’s Bollinger Hofe production facility five years ago, the place would have been littered with Audi R8 supercars in various stages of construction. Had you done the same thing three years later, you’d have seen a blend of R8s and Audi’s then new electric supersaloon, the Audi E-tron GT. 

And today? Well, today the plant no longer rings to the wail of V10 engines firing up for the first time, because with the R8 now having retired, Audi’s most hand-labour-intensive production line is entirely for the E-tron GT, which rolls into life near-silently.

However, for a short period in recent times, the E-tron GT was joined by another car at this small facility, which has always been reserved for Audi’s most revered creations. It’s a car that, like the R8, carries an enormous petrol engine, albeit one wooflier in nature than the supercar’s V10. 

We’re talking about the Audi RS6 Avant GT, which is limited to 660 examples worldwide and whose hand-finishing at the Bollinger Hofe plant is justified by its unique bodywork, requiring a level of finishing that the regular RS6 line can’t easily manage. This is also the most powerful combustion-engined production Audi there has ever been, shading even the last-gasp R8 GT. 

This car is, in many ways, a farewell to the fast, all-conquering Audi wagon with four-wheel drive and at least eight cylinders (there have been as many as V10s in the past). The RS6 GT is therefore both a statement piece and a lovingly wrought valedictory special that references one of Audi’s best-loved racing cars.

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What we will now discover is just how fast this rip-roaring family car really is, and how lucky those 660 owners should count themselves.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 002 side panning

First, know that the GT is more than just an RS6 with a sticker set – although it is an absolutely spectacular sticker set, evoking the Audi 90 Quattro GTO from 1989. That car raced in the American IMSA championship and is surely one of the most distinctive competition cars of all time.

As for the GT, you can also have it in black or grey, at no extra cost, but most testers agreed that this would be rather missing the point. If you fancy a mega-estate that’s more subtle, there’s always Alpina’s 250-off B5 GT Touring, although even that car has canards.

The GT's bonnet and front wings are made from carbonfibre, which sounds like an expensive insurance claim waiting to happen, but you can’t fault Audi’s commitment to the GT.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

The GT came about as a project for the apprentices at Audi’s Neckarsulm plant. In 2020, a dozen of them – hailing from bodywork, mechanics and tooling – worked on the RS6 GTO project for six months with the support of Audi Design.

The RS6 GT is effectively the production version of the concept, being remarkably faithful to the design but with even more power from the 4.0-litre V8. The other obvious change from the regular RS6 – hardly a shrinking violet itself – is the wheels. They hark back to those fitted to Audi S models in the 1990s and early 2000s, such as the ‘8L’ Audi S3, although RS6 GT’s are much bigger at 22in. The wheels are also much more aggressively dished than those on the older cars. Kerbable? Oh yes, but also extraordinarily striking.

More visual tweaks come in the form of a new splitter and a gloss black treatment for the front grilles, making the car look even wider than it is, as well as a carbonfibre bonnet and carbonfibre front wings. They feature cavernous air outlets behind the front wheels, and there’s a different rear spoiler with a central spar, too. All of which explains the need to send the car to Bollinger Hofe for finishing by just seven specially trained employees.

To the oily bits. For duty in the GT, the 4.0-litre TFSI V8 is unchanged and makes 621bhp and 627lb ft. It is manifestly old-school in its application, lacking any form of hybridisation. It drives through an eight-speed torque-converter automatic gearbox, then through Audi’s Quattro permanent fourwheel drive system, with its locking centre differential and Quattro Sport rear limited-slip differential.

Meanwhile, the suspension is radically altered, with the inclusion of RS Sports Suspension Pro. Instead of air chambers and adaptive dampers, the GT is fitted with height-adjustable coilovers that also use dampers adjustable for rates of compression (low and high speed) and rebound (one universal control). Changing the settings isn’t the work of a moment, particularly at the back, and, depending on what you’re altering, can require the car to be lifted and some cladding to be removed. Most owners will, we suspect, leave the GT in its factory settings.

Figures? There are 13 ‘clicks’ for each of the three damper variables, and on the road Audi recommends rebound at 6 (front) and 10 (rear); low-speed compression at 8 and 8; and high-speed compression at 10 and 6. For circuit work, these figures respectively become 4 and 3, 2 and 7, and 4 and 4. The owners’ manual is also at pains to state the damping should never be set to opposing extremes at each end of the car, lest the handling balance becomes dangerous: “The difference between the value on the two axles must not be greater than 9 clicks!”

Elsewhere, the car’s anti-roll bars are 30% stiffer at the front compared with the regular RS6 and 80% at the rear. Note also that the basic spring rate is also increased, although Audi doesn’t say by how much.

As for weight, our test car came in at 2144kg fully fuelled. That’s more than the claimed 2075kg but notably less than the regular RS6 we tested in 2020, which was 2217kg.

 

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INTERIOR

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 010 dash

Inside, this is mostly standard RS6. Audi hasn’t gone full ‘Clubsport’ spec and stripped out the rear seats, a la Alfa Romeo Giulia GTAm or Porsche Taycan Turbo GT.

Which isn’t to say that the GT’s cabin isn’t purposeful. You sit in superb carbonfibre-backed buckets, which are just as supportive but more comfortable than those from M or AMG. Most of the leather is replaced with grippy red and copper-stitched microsuede. 

Each GT is numbered – and not generically but individually. Our test car’s etching on the transmission tunnel revealed it to be car 659 out of the total of 660 that Audi built.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

Even so, the environment isn’t as in-your-face techy as the latest generation of Audis, which is a good thing. There’s no shortage of screens, with a digital gauge cluster and a split-level central touchscreen, but there is a subtlety about them. The lower one lets you quickly adjust the climate control and toggle various driver assistance systems, while the upper one controls all the multimedia, sat-nav and vehicle settings. 

Combined with a small but well-chosen selection of physical buttons, it all works well, and everything you touch feels solid and high-quality. All of which is very nice – and just a little incongruous in a car as savagely quick as the RS6 GT is…

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 020 v8 engine

The 7.5sec 0-100mph time our RS6 GT recorded at Horiba MIRA is only three-tenths quicker than that of the RS6 Avant we tested in 2020 – a car with 30bhp or so less than its esteemed, limited-edition relation.

However, what those numbers don’t reveal is that while the standard car logged its figures on dry Tarmac, the GT did it in the damp. This is a monstrously quick car with heaps of traction, and in fact that 7.5sec 0-100mph time is an exact match for the hot-off-the-press BMW M5, and in saloon form at that. 

It’s notable that, despite the BMW’s vastly more powerful hybrid set-up, just 4bhp per tonne separates the two cars. Equally, in a world of increasingly hybridised alternatives, the distinct turbo lag of the big V8, along with the fact that it doesn’t truly hit its stride before about 3000rpm, does date the RS6 driving experience somewhat, especially if you’re not in quite the right gear and portion of the rev range on the exits of corners. The same is true for the shift quality from the ZF gearbox. It’s good and predictably so, but no longer feels as clinical as it might. 

This driveline is still a real charmer, mind, and when that V8 does grip the chassis, you know about it. In the real world, very little can live with an RS6 GT. It sounds good – pretty much how you’d want a turbo V8 to, with that ‘air being chopped’ gargle coming from the rear pipes, overlaid with plenty of turbo whoosh.

Lastly, braking. The GT is fitted with carbon-ceramic discs as standard, and with 440mm of diameter at the front, they fill the space behind those fat white spokes quite outrageously. They’re effective, too – more effective than they are communicative, if truth be told.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 024 rear corner

The equation here is simple. To become an RS6 GT, the regular car gives away a small but notable portion of its surprisingly high levels of rolling refinement, and in return it attains a level of precision, response and transparency hitherto unseen on an RS6 of any vintage.

This manifests most obviously in the GT’s steering. It has a levity about it that the regular car doesn’t, such that you can twirl it in a way that allows to you to forget just how much metal is strung out behind you. There’s also no doubt that, in the GT, the tail of the car follows the nose through corners with a unity the standard car can’t quite capture.

There’s also an enjoyable simplicity about this car. Once you’re up and running, you can’t fuss about with the suspension behaviour, and the mere knowledge of that fact is quite liberating, most testers thought.

Equally, this is a less rounded product than the regular car. The magic of the old BMW M5 CS was that it somehow managed to improve the M5 recipe in terms of both engagement and comfort. The RS6 GT doesn’t pull off the same trick. The primary ride is good enough and makes for easy daily driving in the factory damper settings, but there’s a localised lack of absorption at each corner of the car in terms of secondary ride pitter-patter and potholes etc. It’s not why anyone buys an Audi RS6.

 

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 001 front cornering

On one hand the GT is an estate that costs as much as a well-optioned Porsche 911 Turbo S, and on the other it is sold out. Such is the allure of what will surely be the final car of its type (the next ‘RS6’ will almost certainly be electric).

We can see the appeal. That said, the regular RS6 offers 95% of what the GT can do, and is easier to rub along with, if no more economical. Those who buy the GT will be doing so for its rarity and its considerable significance in the history of the brand. It is arguably the most extreme estate ever made.

VERDICT

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Audi RS6 GT review 2025 026 front static

The RS6 GT is the eye-wateringly expensive mega-estate nobody needed, although you could say something similar about the BMW M5 CS – and look at the plaudits that garnered.

This car was never going to rewrite the way fast Audis drive, but it noticeably heightens the delicacy, response and, in certain circumstances, raw adjustability of an already excellent machine. It also has a streak of individuality that’s rarely seen in Ingolstadt’s wares. 

Audi should look to carry the ethos of the RS6 GT forward into its upcoming RS-badged PHEV and EV models: the speed, finesse and attitude.

Illya Verpraet

Illya Verpraet Road Tester Autocar
Title: Road Tester

As a road tester, Illya drives everything from superminis to supercars, and writes reviews and comparison tests, while also managing the magazine’s Drives section. Much of his time is spent wrangling the data logger and wielding the tape measure to gather the data for Autocar’s in-depth instrumented road tests.

He loves cars that are fun and usable on the road – whether piston-powered or electric – or just cars that are very fit for purpose. When not in test cars, he drives an R53-generation Mini Cooper S.

Richard Lane

Richard Lane, Autocar
Title: Deputy road test editor

Richard joined Autocar in 2017 and like all road testers is typically found either behind a keyboard or steering wheel (or, these days, a yoke).

As deputy road test editor he delivers in-depth road tests and performance benchmarking, plus feature-length comparison stories between rival cars. He can also be found presenting on Autocar's YouTube channel.

Mostly interested in how cars feel on the road – the sensations and emotions they can evoke – Richard drives around 150 newly launched makes and models every year. His job is then to put the reader firmly in the driver's seat.