Petrol Heads’ Corner

Comparing cars during Covid

David O’Neill*

I was given plenty of warning about this review before it was carried out and made a few enquiries around the traps about what would be the most suitable vehicle to take on my usual test route.

Unfortunately, Covid and the government stepped in and ruined everything. I had a car set up to take over to the beach, but then I caught the dreaded lurgy and was isolating for seven days. The idea of getting into someone else’s car went down the gurgler along with something fresh and exciting, so you will just have to be patient and wait until next time.

I even had one of those eco-friendly things jacked up. The Audi RS GT e-tron which, believe it or not, was situated in the Tron (sorry about that – couldn’t resist).

However, I couldn’t get hold of said e-tron, so I am going to resort to a, sort of, review.

I am fortunate enough to have been able to lay my hands on a near-new 2021 Audi RS6. So I thought I would undertake a comparison of three cars which are the same model, but manufactured some years apart. I have previously reviewed a 2015 RS6 and a 2017 RS6 Performance, and so I will compare these to the latest iteration, the 2021 RS6.

They are all the same vehicle. You know, hated by the Greens and Labour, loved by petrolheads and you have to sell your first born to go in and fill it up. The Germans, by the way, call them an Avant. We call them station wagons. However, it is not uber-cool to call them station wagons. One must call them Avant. I mean Audi station wagon or Audi Avant? Pretty simple really – Avant! The Italians would just say “Avanti!” and throw the rear vision mirror out the window because nobody is going to catch them……….

This is a car that you can:

a. Take a load of rubbish to the dump.

b. Pick up Grandma and Grandad, load their Zimmer frames into the back and cart them around somewhere for afternoon tea.

c. Deposit them back at the rest home and then take it out onto the track and give the Aston Martins and a few others a good thrashing. The specs (Petrolhead bits) for each vehicle are as follows:

Even though the 2021 car is heavier, you can see why the acceleration is better. The torque it delivers is exceptional, and it is noticeable – a lot actually. To put it another way – they all go like stink.

Looks

This is something you can make up your own mind about. The cars look as follows:

2015

2017

2021

These cars all have the same look – namely they want to eat you, preferably raw. I find that cars pull over when you pull up behind them on the open road (and that’s not because I’m travelling too close). The car just looks like it needs to pass.

The 2015 car was raw power, noisy, hard riding. The 2017 car was similar but with more grunt. The 2021 car has bigger wheels (22 inch), air suspension and a whole lot more sound deadening material inside it. I’m not saying it’s a Rolls Royce but you can drive along, listening to music and have a discussion at the same time without having to yell.

The cockpit does seem to be bigger. The boot is certainly bigger. The sophistication available to the 2021 car is light years ahead of the 2015 car.

Everything in the 2021 car is touchscreen with cameras everywhere, radar sensors that would happily grace one of New Zealand’s war ships and all sorts of protection equipment with the things that families like such as heated seats, cooled seats, wonderful stereo etc etc.

They all look and sound like uber fast cars (and they are) and they all go like one. The 2021 car is noticeably quicker and gets up to speed in the blink of an eye without too much fuss. As well as a Drive mode and Sports mode it has two RS modes. RS1 is pretty much everything coming on to make you go like crazy and RS2 switches off the traction control so that if you want to drift it, you can (that’s of course if you are happy drifting a car, worth an extraordinary amount of money, round a corner). Alternatively, you can switch it into RS2 mode, have no traction control and lose it on the first corner – your call…

Comfort is, as I have described, improved, namely the 2021 car is much more comfortable than the older models. To be fair that is to be expected to some degree. Audi have had a long time to get this one right and I think they have nailed it this time. The hardest job they have is continuing to keep improving the model. Mind you, climate change and price of petrol will probably force their hand.

The 2021 car has power locking doors, so you don’t have to slam the door when closing it, it will close itself, panorama roof (this is a fancy name for a glass roof back and front with blinds that slide across and the front one actually opens).

They all have extraordinary sound systems and you can play music, heavy rock or something in between if you wish and you will get the most exquisite noise coming out of the speakers.

I am sure it probably annoys the aficionados amongst you to hear me say this, because no doubt you will have cars with numerous speakers situated in every conceivable aperture and every corner but I have to say the B&O speakers are very good.

I have had all of these cars over on my test route which is the drive along the Hauraki Plains, over the Kopu-Hikuai Hills and into the beach and all of them performed exceedingly well, both through the corners and along the straights.

I’d go so far as to say the 2021 car handles better than the others. It seems to have better grip and you can feel the road better when you go through the corners. Don’t get me wrong, they are heavy cars and they need to be handled firmly because you can come into a corner way too fast, quite unexpectedly, and it doesn’t matter how good a driver you are, you are going to end up in the ditch if you don’t watch it.

The one thing about these cars is that you have to rethink your way of driving. Because of their speed and their pickup, you need to think about getting past the car you are passing and then braking for the next corner or the car in front because the cars will hit extraordinary speeds in a very short space of time (and I’m not going to mention numbers here) and it doesn’t take much to approach a corner at a speed that is way too fast for comfort.

Noise

This deserves a paragraph on its own. Starting the car, driving it or passing another car leaves nobody under the misapprehension or misunderstanding that this car is not a V8. It is.

When it is in Sport or RS mode, it is incredibly raucous, downshifts as you approach a corner with a slight blip on the throttle (undertaken electronically) and turns itself into a sports car with that glorious V8 roar – which us petrolheads all know and love.

And on that slightly contentious note, I will end. Until next time – safe driving.

I appreciate this wouldn’t thrill the eco warriors of you who love to drive hybrid and electric vehicles, but you don’t buy a car like the RS6 to warm the cockles of your environmental heart. You buy it because you like to have a V8 and you like it to go quick and you love the noise.

David O'Neill

* David O’Neill is a Hamilton barrister practising out of Riverbank Chambers. We suspect he loves Audis.