Drive Times five

Coolest Audi RS cars Like those other performance letters from the German car industry – M and AMG – the Audi RS brand has produced some fairly serious performance cars over the years. Today, we pick five of the coolest. And, yes, that does include a baby

The first RS car pretty much set the template for not only successive RS cars, but also Audi’s reputation for producing excellent fast AWD wagons. A collaboration between Audi and Porsche, the RS2 was based on the Audi 80 Avant and packed Audi’s 2.2-litre inline five-cylinder petrol turbo engine, heavily modified by Porsche to produce 232kW. Porsche also designed the suspension and braking systems, as well as assembling the RS2, meaning that it could almost be considered a Porsche wagon. Almost. Only 180 were built in RHD form and sold in the UK, South Africa and New Zealand. The only RS SUV actually shares a lot with the original RS2. Both feature unlikely body styles for performance cars of the time, both feature a turbocharged inline five cylinder engine, both hit 100kmh in around five seconds (4.8 for the RS2 and 5.5 for the RS Q3), both are AWD and both are a huge amount of fun to throw down a winding road. Oh, and while there are other performance SUVs in the Q3’s segment, the RS Q3 pretty much wipes the floor with them. Much like the RS2 did back in 1994. If you consider the Audi TT to be a hairdresser’s car, then the RS version would be owned by the sort of hairdresser who would tear your hair out with his or her teeth. While the TT RS looks like a scaled-down R8, it packs a 294kW/480Nm inline fivecylinder engine under the bonnet, driving all four wheels via Audi’s quattro AWD system. And it can really go. Seriously quick, the TT RS can sprint to the legal limit in 3.9 seconds, but its real party trick is what it can do through corners. And that is basically not-slow-down. At all. The 1999 successor to the original RS2 is every much a legend as the car it replaced. The RS4 packed a twin-turbo 2.7-litre petrol V6 that pumped out 280kW and 440Nm and could pull the RS4 to 100kmh from a standing start in just 4.9 seconds. Like the RS2, it was only ever available in Avant (wagon) form, something that Audi would change with the next RS4 (which was available in wagon, sedan and convertible forms), before reverting back to Avant-only with the latest version. Unlike the RS2, there was no Porsche input into the RS4, with Audi’s in-house RS division, quattro gmbh, taking the lead in the development. While the C6 RS6 was technically impressive, it lacked drama and excitement. The V10 was strangely subdued and its performance was masked by sheer bulk. Its twin-turbo V8-powered successor, however, is all sorts of noisy drama and excessive power. The 412kW/700Nm C7-series RS6 can knock off the 0-100kmh run in 3.9 seconds and actually drove the tabloid media in the UK into a foaming frenzy that a family car would dare be so powerful and ridiculously fast.