Review: 2013 Audi S6

Audi first tossed us the keys to its S6 with the SuperBowl mega-ad "Prom". Premise: dateless kid gets handed Dad's super-sedan for the evening, kisses the prom queen, gets punched by the prom king, snorts around town with a big grin on his face. The message was clear: buy this car, put a little excitement in your life. What a load of cobblers. It's a beautiful car though. To my mind, Audi does the whole kickboxer-in-a-suit best of ze German manufacturers. You could nearly call it subtle; all classed up in charcoal wool but with cauliflower ears of aluminum. Of course, the grille looks just plain ridiculous with that mandatory front plate floating out there like the pricetag on a Marshall amp. Somebody in Ingolstadt is a big fan of the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. Or basking sharks. Or venetian blinds. Or all three. There's something molluscan about those all-LED headlights as well. I like the lit-up eyeliner effect, but what with light-emitting-diodes glued on everything down to a Nissan Sentra (where they look like permanent Christmas lights in a trailer-park) it's hardly a talking point anymore. Anyway, it's a neat-looking car from the back, which is the view you'll have of it if you're driving anything short of a Shelby Mustang (or if Baruth's giving you a lift in a rental Camry – wink). Mein Gott, this thing hauls keister! Outfitted with the optional Bang and Olufsen stereo-system, twin NCC-1701 Enterprises deploy from the dashboard on startup, the better with which to bathe your ears in crappy high-compression MP3-quality audio. Choose a CD instead and the octave-spanning mitts of Sergei Rachmaninov might be dancing along the dash, or you could crank up the sat-radio and try to figure out what Nicki Minaj has against gardening implements. Quilted seats, brushed aluminum trim – why do people buy Bentleys again? Seriously. What a lovely place to slosh your internal organs around in. Sorry about the PR photo. Previously, Audi's all-weather M5-equivalent had two more cylinders and two fewer turbos. The V10 will be missed by some, but not by those who remember the less than stellar way it combined Lambo fuel consumption with limp-noodle torque. Think of it as a sort of LM002-equivalent: neither that Frankenstein's -12 nor the Gallardo-sourced -10 were meant to be harnessed to such a heavy ox-cart. As luck would have it, I stepped right out of a 2004 RS6 into this modern twin-turbo Teuton and it's basically the same car: a ridiculously complicated leather-and-steel straight-jacket with which to bind Newton's laws and bend them to the driver's will. It's a Fifty Shades of Grey physics textbook. With the new machine, you get a more-efficient 4.0L V8 fitted with forced induction – something Audi's always done well – and despite only moderate peak torque gains over the old S6, the increase in forward shove is huge. 406lb/ft of shove slots in around 1400 rpm, and while your co-VP is still deciding between Sport and Sport+ in their M-car, you've simply wound up the snails to their full four hunnerd n' twenny horses and walked outta there. The Audi is not without its own pre-flight checks, but simply flicking the selector into Dynamic should do the trick. The steering is artificially sweetened. The air-suspension prepares for attack. The somewhat-laggy dual-clutch transmission steps up the snap-downs. All this stuff will be broken four minutes after the warranty expires, so enjoy it while you can. Ripping up a curving mountain road reveals a complete indifference for driver-based idiocy. You know the whole steering-wheel and accelerator pedal on a string Speed Secrets thing? The Audi takes the scissors to any thread of careful throttle management or unwinding at the apex – kill 'em all and let God sort it out seems to be the order of the day. It's a GT-R with two extra doors and a heritage of coil-pack failures. For me, that's a problem. The heads-up-display ticks through the numbers with alarming rapidity, but there's little to do besides steer left and right, or jam on the brakes when needed – these could stop whatever hyperbolic metaphor you prefer: a freight train, the Earth's rotation, volcanic eruption, the tides, tectonic drift, space, time. Here, crawling up into an altitude where wet snow still clings to the mountain like the "before" shot of a Head n' Shoulders commercial, the big Audi's poise is that of a show-shoed Siberian Tiger. A muted whuffling issues from quad exhausts like the warning cough of a big cat about to spring, and away it sleds again to hurtle back down the hill like an avalanche with heated seats. Fast? Oh yeah. But its only the king of the prom, and somewhere out there a guy in a BRZ just planted one on your girl. You can black his eye if you want – this thing can haul off and land a haymaker on pretty much anyone. Poise, power, comfort, luxury, and the nagging sensation that someone out there is having more fun than you are. For a lot less. Audi Canada provided the vehicle tested and insurance. from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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