AUDI RS6 STRUGGLES IN GAUTENG

Gauteng-based motoring publication Cars in Action is the first magazine to test the über Audi RS6. Cars in Action is the only motoring magazine that does performance testing at South Africa’s high altitude reef region which can go up to 1700m high. Because at such high altitude the air that cars need to breathe and perform is so thin, every car in Gauteng loses a certain amount of power. Up to 17% actually, so you’ll find a car like the BMW 330i not producing its officially stated 200kW but only about 170kW for example, or a Mercedes-Benz CLS 63 AMG could actually be making 320kW instead of 378kW.

Though they still get affected, turbocharged cars don’t have as much of a problem with high altitudes. This partly explains the really disappointing results attained by CIA while testing the RS6 in Gauteng. Partly. The RS6 produces 426kW (580hp) and 650Nm of torque from a 5.0-litre V10 twin-turbo engine. Audi claims it does 0 – 100km/h in 4.5 seconds, but we know Audi tends to understate its performance figures so we are expecting about 4.4 seconds on the coast. Since none of the Cape Town-based magazines CAR and TopCar has tested it yet, we don’t know how close it comes to those claims.

What we did expect was that it would do a sub-5 second time in Gauteng. Apparently those expectations were too high. CIA has recorded a time of 5.7 seconds from 0 – 100km/h. That is extremely disappointing given that a BMW M5 with a much less powerful engine will post 5 seconds for that distance. Even an RS4 will do better, achieving 5.6 seconds.

For R1.1 million we expected more. Again. For this class we pined for more. And we got less. Our hopes are now pinned on the thought that perhaps the car is too new and has too few kilometers on it to achieve any meaningful performance time. But still, that 0.7 second gap seems like Mt Everest to us.

UPDATE! *06 February 2009* The good folks at CIA say they went back and retested the RS6. Although results will only be available in a couple of weeks' time, they assured me that much better figures were achieved this time around.

SOURCE: CARS IN ACTION