15 fast estates that aren’t obvious or expensive

The very best kind of car in the world is an estate. Call it what you will: station wagon, dad chariot, weekender, sportwagon or shooting brake, the fact of the matter is the second a manufacturer adds a big, open area behind the rear seats and seals the deal with a hatch, we are in like Flynn.

And so, being, Top Gear, you might imagine that we like the new Audi RS6 (above) very, very much. And we do.

But what if you’ve spent all your money on Spotify, flat whites and avocado toast, or whatever out-of-touch bankers point to whenever we say we’d like to afford things like cars, or a house?

Well, have no fear! Well, have the right amount of fear – the Doomsday clock is now measured in seconds to midnight, rather than minutes, after all – but have no fear about this: you can get some seriously amazing, supremely rare-groove estates for a sixth of the cost of a new RS6, or less.

Yes, Top Gear is here to save the day, if your day can only be saved with some moderately flimsy buying advice, centred around oddball-yet-quick estates that don’t squander your bank account in one fell swoop. Hey, it could happen.

Estimate: £10,000
0-60: Seven seconds
Top speed: 130mph
Best bit: Sneering at SUV drivers who chose… poorly
Worst bit: Apparently, everything breaks 

There’s a curious allure to Audi’s lifted wagons. Common sense dictates that, as they’re higher and heavier than standard, they’ll be generally worse than the regular Avant Audi started with. But there’s such an essential rightness to them – the softer suspension soaks up crappy roads with ease, and the ever-so-slightly-higher ride height means that speed bumps and potholes don’t trouble you anywhere near as much as a regular car. But – and this is crucial – they’re still essentially cars, not SUVs, so they don’t come with the litany of performance and handling problems that it seems only Porsche can properly solve.

And if you combine the Allroad’s day in, day out prowess with the silky rumblings of Audi’s venerable 4.2-litre V8, which saw service in everything from the R8 supercar to the S8 limo? That’s knocking on the door of perfection, that is. Just keep the bank account padded to soften the blow when something goes wrong…

Estimate: £6500
0-60: six seconds, or thereabouts
Top speed: quick
Best bit: Driving if not Genesis, then certainly one of the early books
Worst bit: Knowing that better AMG engines exist

While there’s a lot of love for the C63 estate (and rightly so), it’s always good to remember where you come from. And, in the case of blisteringly fast Merc-AMG estates, things started about here. Sure, it was far from the first Mercedes-AMG tie-up, and it wasn’t even close to the first AMG-branded estate. But it was the first AMG built from start to finish in a Mercedes factory, not taken off the line and hand-fettled by AMG. It’s also the first time a V8 found a place in a Mercedes C-Class. And, judging by how the 4.3-litre V8 delivered – 300bhp and the same in torque – it was never going to be the last.

Estimate: £13,000
0-60: 4.1 seconds
Top speed: 155mph, easy
Best bit: Seven seats AND a supercharged 5.4-litre V8? Where do we sign?
Worst bit: Ah. At the bottom of this massive repair bill

Before the runaway success of the C63 – which cemented ‘63’ as a byword for quick Mercedes, even as the engines changed size – the best-selling AMG was this, the E55. Well, not this; most people bought saloons. But most people were, in fact, wrong. Because this is an E-Class estate, it meant you could get a full SEVEN people in your 470-odd horsepower sled and terrify/amuse all of them at once.

The presence of superchargers, in our estimation, is always better than the absence thereof. And the E55 shows why – 516lb ft at the disposal of your right foot, blowing the newer (and still entirely excellent) 6.2-litre V8 into the weeds.

Estimate: £10,000
0-60: About seven seconds
Top speed: 150mph or so
Best bit: The looks
Worst bit: The flab – it’s more than 1,700kg

This makes the grade, like all Alfas do, by being absolutely gorgeous first and by scoring a series of own goals second.

So yes, 256bhp might seem a little on the weedy side when you’re hauling 1.7 tonnes, but remember: these things kept up with James Bond himself in an Aston DBS in Quantum of Solace. And, if that movie taught us anything, apart from how bad Bond flicks can be sometimes, it’s that Alfas must be pretty potent to keep up with the world’s least-secret agent.

Back to reality and you’ll see that the 3.2-litre V6 is not the transcendent Busso found in the 156 and 147 GTAs, but rather shares its block with a Holden Commodore. Because of course it does. But, as always, a quick look at the 159’s form and most, if not all, is forgiven again – until it breaks down.

Estimate: £8000
0-60: 5.3 seconds
Top speed: 155mph
Best bit: It has the same V10 as a LAMBORGHINI
Worst bit: It also has the running costs of Balmoral Castle

OK, not going to lie: this one’s pretty lust-worthy. Not because it’s especially pretty, or a particularly great handler, but because of one very important thing – will anyone else you know have a Lambo V10-powered estate to punt around in? Didn’t think so.

Yes, you could have an RS4 or RS6 Avant from about this time, if you had more to spend. But aren’t they just a bit… obvious?

You’ve heard of the elephant in the room, but a V10 estate with 14 years under its belt is more like a sword of Damocles for your wallet. It’ll fall one day, just as sure as night follows day and Williams F1 follows from the back of the grid. But the fun you’ll have before then just might make it worth it. Possibly. Maybe. Almost.

Estimate: $24,000 dollarydoos (or about £12,500)
0-60: Five-ish seconds
Top speed: flamin’ quick
Best bit: 6.2 litres of V8 goodness
Worst bit: hearing British people try to put on an Australian accent

Australians don’t make cars anymore, which is actually a bit of a shame. We’re not saying there was a constant stream of automotive hits from the sunburned (and fire-ravaged, and biblically flooded) country any more than we’re saying there was a constant stream of hits from its musical artists. But for every Jason Donovan or Jet, there was at least one Tame Impala or Nick Cave, if you take our meaning.

The HSV R8 Tourer is the epitome of, well… not so much a hit, because Holden Australia couldn’t sell enough cars or make enough money to keep the wolves from the door. So let’s call it a deep cut from a well-known, if not entirely successful band. And with that metaphor tortured like a Guantanamo inmate, let’s get to the point: the R8 Tourer had a) the engine from a Corvette, b) the basic chassis from a Camaro and c) enough space in the back for a band’s worth of musical instruments.

Estimate: $13,000 AUD (about £7000)
0-60: Less than eight seconds
Top speed: 110mph (limited, as per JDM cars of the era)
Worst bit: The satnav and all the buttons are in Japanese
Best bit: Learning Japanese!

Before you clicked into this article, you probably already had an idea of what you’d find. Audi RS? Of course. Volvo? Definitely. Merc? Natürlich. But we’re going to go out on a limb here and say that the Toyota Crown Athlete probably wasn’t on your mental list.

But, and this might just be nascent oddball JDM adoration talking, we think it should be. Mostly because under the bonnet, there’s a twin-turbocharged 1JZ under the bonnet. That’s basically a 2JZ, just displacing 2.5 litres instead of 3.0, and with parallel turbos (or, in this case, a single turbo) instead of sequential ones. At least for the 15 and a half seconds that you leave the standard turbos in; with some fiddling (and yes, overnight parts from Japan), you can make 600 or even 700 horsepower on the stock 1JZ-GTE block, making one of the best proper street sleepers we can imagine.