The 2025 Audi RS6 Avant pairs supercar specs with station wagon sizing. On paper, it’s the ultimate car of the connoisseur. In pictures, too—the thing looks like the epitome of automotive elitism with its pronounced haunches, sprung-serpent face, impressive wheels, and oh yeah, it’s a wagon! I enjoyed the hell out of it, even while finding it slightly intimidating and even occasionally annoying to drive.
It’s easy to understand why car dorks love the idea of well-made wagons. Haul lumber home on Sundays, haul the kids to school on Mondays, and haul ass everywhere else—what more could you want?
Yet besides custom builds commissioned by wagon wackos like Dax Shepard, high-performance station wagons are pretty rare in America. In the last few decades, models that were both station wagons and true drivers’ cars make a short list: Some Subaru WRXs, the Cadillac CTS-V, a limited selection of specific Volvos, the Mercedes-AMG E55 and E63, short-lived Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo Turbo and, well, can we count the inbound BMW M5 Touring? We might have to, because that’s the only direct current-year competitor to the RS6 we’ll have on American roads soon.
Andrew P. Collins
So, what does this tell us? People who apparently love hot wagons can’t afford them, and those who can … have no taste. No, I’m mostly just kidding. But as a wagon man myself (who can’t afford an RS6 either), spending a week with this thing left me with slightly mixed feelings. I had a spectacular time with it buzzing around my old L.A. stomping grounds, ripping canyons, and yes, even sitting in traffic. However, I have to admit that the performance car/practical car paradox manifests itself in more ways than I expected. The relationship between these two concepts is more complex than having a lot of horsepower and cargo capacity.
The Basics
This is a $130,000, 4,600-pound five-seat station wagon with an immensely powerful twin-turbo V8, all-wheel drive, and an advanced system of suspension and traction technology. The latter makes the machine’s mass and energy manageable for mortal drivers—and surprisingly comfortable. We’ll come back to that.
Andrew P. Collins
The Nardo Gray 2025 Audi RS6 I drove is fundamentally the same as the model that emerged in 2020, except that now Audi only offers the Performance trim and a limited-production RS6 GT. We’ve explored the technology and even ownership experience of this car quite a bit over the past few years, so I’ll just hit the high points and refer you to Audi’s spec sheet for the deep spec reference.
The current Performance variant squeaks beyond the car’s initial offering of 600 horsepower to a claimed 621. Torque was 590 lb-ft on the car initially, now it’s 623. Upsized turbo compressor wheels and a little extra boost are responsible for the extra oomph. The U.S.-spec car is limited to a paltry 155 mph, while Euro cars equipped with an RS dynamic package (all-wheel steering and a sport differential) are ratcheted up to 174 mph. The RS dynamic plus package, which adds ceramic brakes, claims a top speed of 189.5 mph. If you’re stuck with me in America, don’t worry, I’m sure a tuner can un-limit the car’s vmax for the right price.
The RS6 fit right in with other elite pieces of hardware at the weekly Good Vibes Breakfast Club gathering at Newcomb’s Ranch. Kyle and I played hooky to blast up the hill and haul some coffee for folks. Andrew P. Collins
There’s 30 cubic feet of cargo space behind the second row of seats, which expands to 59.3 cubic feet with the seats down. Speaking practically, the cargo area’s very wide, but the shallow slope of the rear window eats into your hauling area somewhat. Small price to pay for the car to have the proportions of a manta ray. It’s low, it’s long, and it’s really, really wide. At six feet tall I could basically lay across the back with minimal discomfort; throw an air mattress down and it’s a nice little dorm.
Loading in mulch, plywood, and filthy treasures from the junkyard is possible but painful. All the car’s surfaces are wrapped in fine leather, Alcantara, or thick carpeting. You’ll want to keep a moving blanket in the back for garden store runs for sure.
Driving the Audi RS6
As with all the best toys, the RS6 experience begins before you even unlock the car.
I found the wagon waiting for me in a corner of a concrete citadel parking garage. Just sitting static it has a loitering crocodile vibe that is menacing and just deeply badass. Listening to the hum of the fluorescent light and clip-clop of my wife’s shoes, I felt like Jason Statham walking up to this thing. And when I hit the key fob to see the headlights do a little power-up ceremony? Couldn’t have hell-yeah’d harder.
Andrew P. Collins
That feeling of heroism mostly carried on as I proceeded to put a few hundred miles on the car over the course of a week. People buy cars like this to feel cool, powerful, and important and as far as delivering on those fronts, the RS6 is perfect. The dashboard looks like a sci-fi warship. The exhaust note is mellifluous. The seats are comfortable and the stereo can boil your organs. If it doesn’t do the trick, even with every seat full, launching the vehicle from a stop pulls guts back towards the cargo bay.
The RS6’s switchgear is a real mixed bag. Some of the controls are spectacular—the volume and track-changing knob is perfect. Then there’s that headlight button. Yuck. Andrew P. Collins
Driving the RS6 as most supercars are primarily used—lumbering around in nice-neighborhood traffic—is a pain in the ass. I mean, all the above very much applies at low speeds. I still felt like a high-class hitman idling between stoplights. That feeling stops, however, when pulling into gas stations or parking lots, where the length and lowness of the car require extreme care to keep the chin from scraping. And you certainly won’t feel very badass while parking and the proximity sensors scream like a pearl-clutching grandma when you get within a meter of a curb.
The brake dust accumulation on this bad boy is insane. The wheels are gorgeous, but you’ll be cleaning them every day. Andrew P. Collins
Then there’s the control interface; two tiers of touchscreen that look super sweet and futuristic but are loathsome to operate. Here’s why I hate Audi’s main infotainment setup: The controls look like the touchscreens you see everywhere else in your life, except a gentle tap like you use on a phone doesn’t do anything. You need to firmly press the screen until it registers a physical detent, like the whole screen becomes a physical button. As a fan of haptic feedback I would have thought I’d like this, but it’s just bizarre. Almost 20 hours of driving time wasn’t enough to get me used to it. Thankfully, you can turn this off, reverting the displays back to working like traditional touchscreens.
The upper screen can project your iPhone via Apple CarPlay—when it’s in this mode, guess what, it reverts to normal gentle-touch action. So you’ve potentially got one screen requiring two totally different finger interactions depending on what app it’s running. Woof, just terrible UX. Speaking of CarPlay, the car had a rough time with that in general. Pairing to my phone was very annoyingly inconsistent.
Audi’s digital gauge clusters are some of the nicest looking on the road right now. They’re clean, crisp designs that feel sporty and fun with a lot of customizability. But vexingly the two most practical—water temperature and fuel level—are obscured by the steering wheel. And yes, I tried a few different seating positions. Andrew P. Collins
My 2017 BMW wirelessly grabs my phone on CarPlay instantly, no problem, every time I start the car. This brand-new Audi was hit or miss on whether or not it’d recognize my iPhone 13 Mini within a few minutes. Minutes! An eternity in waiting-for-my-music time. My final connectivity complaint might seem like a random one, but I think it’s important: The Qi wireless charger is precariously close to the cupholder, and closing the console around it does not sufficiently protect it from splashes.
In other words, if you plop a standard 12-ounce coffee cup into the center console and mash the gas, your phone is going to get java-drenched. Not that I would condone peeling out of a coffee shop, but, don’t do that with this car.
My colleagues have documented the RS6’s performance driving behavior pretty well so I’ll limit observations there to my three biggest takeaways. First off, rowdy accelerations are a riot. The RS6 has a high tolerance for short-blast shenanigans, like those quick spurts as you turn away from traffic or scare-your-passengers parking lot departures. It’s not hard to induce a minor cat-butt wiggle while retaining the feeling of total control—you can stomp around somewhat obnoxiously while staying well within the safety net of the car’s traction control system.
Andrew P. Collins
Then there’s the ride quality—supreme. It really is amazing how comfortable this car is over all kinds of roads considering how responsive and stiff it can feel when you graduate from goofing around on side streets and are hard-charging up in the canyons. The RS6 felt simultaneously planted and compliant in a way I simply can’t recall experiencing in other vehicles. That might be its greatest accomplishment, and one that you’ll appreciate even if you don’t do track days or any kind of hardcore driving near the vehicle’s limits.
I’ve already expressed that power is bountiful and the soundtrack is good—the brakes are also spectacular and while I’ve read some criticisms that they’re too grabby at low speed, they seemed perfectly suited to the machine to me. The last aspect of the RS6 experience I wanted to talk about is steering. I didn’t hate it, but, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering why it felt a little off since driving the car. I think there’s just a little dearth of feedback, especially near but off-center that doesn’t quite jive with the skinny, Alcantara-laden, close-your-eyes-and-it’s-a-race-car steering wheel. The car’s certainly responsive and much more maneuverable than you’d expect two and a half tons of station wagon to be, but I could see more hardcore drivers than I being unenthusiastic about the RS6’s steering feel.
Practicality and Economy
Four humans and a lot of luggage fit very comfortably in this car. But there are a few important reasons to mark its practicality with an asterisk. First, there’s fuel consumption—with a big honking V8 comes great thirst. The EPA says you can expect 17 mpg in combined driving, I ended up with about 12 over around 300 miles. Driving like a billionaire, yes, but there’s no point having 600 horses under the hood if you won’t let them gallop. Other running costs will be big, too. My test car’s wheels were absolutely drenched in brake dust after one day of driving, before I even did any real pedal pushing, and Audi gets $1,200 for a set of pads for this.
With minimal exceptions, this car’s interior is spectacular. Even the lowly floormats are treated to super nice stitching and detail work. The seats are extremely comfortable. Action on the automatic shifter is great. And the cargo bay swallowed two carryon rollaboards, plus two day bags and a big suitcase. Andrew P. Collins
Then, there’s the car’s manta ray physique I mentioned earlier. The RS6 sprawls out so far from the cockpit that I felt like a little Lego man mounted on top of a huge sea creature driving this thing. That led to a lot of trust in the proximity beepers, which would cry solid, only for me to get out and find myself a full foot away from the curb. This, I’m sure, an owner would get used to but a week was not enough time to get completely confident with the car’s body.
The Verdict
Andrew P. Collins
If paparazzi stuck a mic in my face as I was exiting this car, my unfiltered take would be: “Looks perfect, Audi ride quality is unmatched, and Alcantara steering wheels suck.” Yeah—a week with this car was enough to convince me that Kristen Lee was right and this microsuede material is not as nice to touch as it is to look at. Hardly a dealbreaker here, though.
After poring over the spec sheet and press kit, I kind of thought we had the ultimate car on our hands here—performance and practicality made to highline car standards. But it’s actually like … a straight-up supercar that happens to be dressed as a station wagon. It’s more of a novelty than a true single-car solution by virtue of how extreme it is. At this price and power level though, that’s what this car should be. But it also made me kind of realize that daily driving 600 horsepower gets a little tiring.
I loved driving the RS6 aggressively, and I respect it as a showcase of impressive automotive engineering that looks cool and makes you feel special. If I could afford one, I’d probably buy one. But to be honest, I was pretty happy to be back into my softer and slower BMW 330i wagon when I got home.
Andrew P. Collins
2025 Audi RS6 Avant Performance SpecsBase Price (as tested)$126,600 ($145,645)Powertrain4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 | 8-speed automatic | all-wheel driveHorsepower621Torque627 lb-ftSeating Capacity5Cargo Volume30 cubic feet behind second row | 59.3 cubic feet behind first rowCurb Weight5,016 pounds0-60 mph3.3Top Speed155 mphEPA Fuel Economy14 city | 21 highway | 17 combinedQuick TakeThis station wagon-shaped supercar is as cool as you think, and more hardcore than it looks.Score9/10
Are you a fellow wagon fan? Let’s talk long roofs sometime—email the author at [email protected].
