Audi RS6 Avant review

When this generation of RS6 debuted, it boasted a starting price of £77,625. The fact you can now pick one up for £15,000 with barely 100,000 miles on the clock and goodies like a Bose hi-fi, panoramic glass sunroof and keyless go in addition to enough power to restart a dying planet surely makes it the bargain of the century? Well, just remember that there are no cheap fast German cars. Only elderly ones.

First off, there’s the running costs. To achieve a regular average north of 22mpg you’ll be doing very well indeed (and questioning why you didn’t just buy a twin-turbo diesel). Range isn’t too bad with a generous 80-litre fuel-tank, but fill-ups from the red will be well into three figures. Ouch.

What goes wrong?

The V10 RS6’s Achilles heel is an infamous cheap seal buried in the bowels of the engine. It’s a 50p part, but its location is the issue: such is the heat generated in the tightly packaged engine bay that said seal gets hot, turns brittle and leaks. No oil in a V10 is Very Bad News.

‘No matter’, you might think – ‘I’ll just get it replaced’. Sure. Except to do so you’ll need to remove the whole engine, a process which costs thousands in labour, even though the part is inexpensive.

Like many cars of this heritage, sensors are also a weak spot – expect warning lights to flash up like Christmas trees.

Then there’s the fact the V10 was infamously unstressed and it took tuners about five minutes to suss out the stock internals would happily develop over 700bhp if you didn’t care about your warranty. Now even the youngest V10 RS6s are approaching their 15th birthday, the temptation to tune will have struck many – make sure there’s no puffs of smoke from the exhaust under heavy acceleration if you’re tempted, as this can indicate turbos are about to call time.

Same goes for the gearbox. From the factory it’s supposedly a set-and-forget sealed for life unit, but after 100,000-miles or more of shuffling V10 fury, a fluid change will do it the power of good. And it’ll eat brakes – ceramics were offered but were so pricey few buyers ticked the box.

It has an appetite for fuel, tyres and brake pads. Two car parking spaces are a good idea. Being AWD it won’t rinse tyres like a BMW or AMG but you’re still looking at £250 a corner for decent rubber. Insurance isn’t pretty as parts become more scarce. 333g/km means tax isn’t cheap either – try £760 a year.

Ultimately, you don’t buy a car like this to save money. It’s like the Space Shuttle really. Eye-wateringly expensive, but when you really must take a big heap of stuff really far away really fast, them’s the brakes.