and just barely lost. But the Audi comes
in a distant third in terms of driving
dynamics. I’ll let Walton deliver the
opening bad news salvo.
“Yikes, where do I even begin?” he
began. “The brake pedal is too sensitive.
It makes braking unpredictable. I was
left-foot braking in the other two with
ease, but not in the Audi.”
I experienced the same with the RS 6’sTurbo) it generates 620 hp along with
604 lb-ft. One more thing: The E 63 S
comes with an expandable, detachable
beer/grocery holder, which is quite cool
and wagonlike.
We talked briefly as a staff about paying
lip service to the fact that with the seats
down, these three cars are pretty useful.
Maybe we’d get hold of a 65-inch TV’s
box and see how easy it is to load. In
the end, that seemed like a lot of work
during a pandemic (for those wondering,
though, the Mercedes-AMG has the most
cargo room).
Instead, we decided to bash the wagons
within an inch of their mechanical lives
up and down some serious mountainous
hunks of macadam, Angeles Crest
Highway and Upper Big Tujunga Canyon
Road. Then, to finish them off (or at least
their tires), we popped over the hill to the
Streets of Willow for a private track day
( big thanks to our friend Jonah!) around
the gritty, 1.6-mile circuit. There was a
bit of freeway time tossed in, too, but let’s
be honest: Performance is what matters
with these three.
I don’t want to write this next part;
you don’t want to read this next part. So
maybe just skip ahead to the end and you
can pretend the Audi RS 6 is 99 percent
as good as the AMG and the Porsche,
carbon-ceramic brakes. Not having confi-
dence in the brakes is one thing, but when
you combine that with poor body control
(the car’s, not mine), it’s a bad mix.
“It doesn’t have very good suspension
compliance,” Walton continued, “and
there is a constant vertical motion. It
never seems to settle down. The steering
is far too light in my hands and provides
zero feedback.”
I should mention this RS 6 had the
optional air suspension; the other choice
is steel springs with hydraulically linked
dampers. When I attended the car’s orig-
inal launch event, I noted, “The hydraulic
system offered better body control,” and,
“The steering felt sharper, too.”
Evans concurred.
“The RS 6 feels heavy—and not good,
bank-vault heavy, just heavy,” he said. “It
especially feels nose-heavy. As soon as
you start pulling real cornering g ’s, the
front tires start screaming.”
Yes, the tires made a ton of noise. All
three cars had their respective tire pres-
sures adjusted to the respective manu-
facturers’ suggested pressures the day
before. However, on the RS 6 we noticed
that pressures shot up to 56 psi in the
front. Usually that’s a result of too much
weight being on a car’s nose. Sure enough,
the Audi is the most nose-heavy here,
carrying about 160 pounds more on its
nose than either of the other cars. Evans
also pointed out the driver is too isolated
from the big engine, but we all loved the
Audi’s straight-line performance.All three German V-8s displace
4.0 liters. Why? Chinese tax laws!
Any larger, and the price goes way up.APRIL 2021 MOTORTREND.COM 29