The new power generation
Porsche’s 911 Turbo and the Audi RS6 – two titans of turbo excess – are back, new and rebooted. We hitch a ride
Why the latest Audi RS6 and Porsche 911 Turbo matter so much
Imagine that instead of looking at the new Audi RS6 and Porsche 911 Turbo, you’re actually eyeing an empty double garage that must be filled – before cardboard boxes claim squatters’ rights – with two cars capable of everything. The kid-in-a-sweet-shop you says speed, and the ability to bend physics round bends. You’ll also want badges and design to impress, and infotainment that’s not only functional but makes passengers ‘ooh’ like Bonfire Night. We’d do the same. But real life isn’t all dreamy flits over the Alps and showboating. Real life has atrocious weather, pockmarked roads, journeys that are longer than expected, people and pets to move, things to tow. A truly rounded pairing would soften that stuff too. Now look back at the 911 Turbo and RS6. Perfect, no?
True, neither can ace every criteria listed – we cannot condone cajoling a dog into your 911 Turbo’s boot, and the RS6 is no 911 round corners – but as a pair to bridge that span as circumstances dictate, they’d make an exceptional daily-driving duo.
This month CAR rides in both as these automotive dynasties embark on their next chapter, finding the ballistically quick German bahnstormers have moved the needle yet again, while also honouring blueprints laid down by the first generations.
It’s perhaps surprising the 911 Turbo’s roots lie in motorsport, given that the 911 GT3 does that job today. The Turbo’s arrival in 1975 was essential to homologate the 934 and 935 racers – the line that peaked with ‘Moby Dick’, and winning Le Mans 1979 outright.
The original Turbo still lives on in the new car: turbo flat-six, tea-tray wing, wider rear arches, and heavy on the luxury, which originally stretched to leather, air-con and electric windows, which the 934 racers retained. Only the new car’s all-wheel drive was absent from the first 260bhp range-topper.
Of course the original evolved gently and lost the motorsport link, but the Turbo also fed development of the 959 – the world’s most advanced supercar in 1987, with all-wheel drive and twin sequential turbochargers – and that expertise filtered back into the 911 Turbo, with every iteration since 1995’s 993 defined by all-weather grip and twin-turbo punch.
Almost concurrent with 993 development, Porsche was also helping lay foundations for the RS6 when it collaborated on the RS2 – the first RS and the car that introduced the now familiar all-wheel-drive/turbo/ estate-body recipe.
The RS6 didn’t arrive until 2002, but over the last three generations Audi has followed the script like it’s mandated in FIA regulations: always wider of arch, forced induction and auto, always best served as an Avant estate, often mistaken for a TDI but frequently out-punching the R8 supercar.
In the past, Audi has flexed the recipe with a saloon, and the ludicrous C6 generation even threw in a Lamborghini V10 then twin-turbocharged it, but randomly pick an RS6 from the classifieds and odds-on it’s a twin-turbo V8 Avant.
The new Avant-only C8 represents an evolution of the previous C7 – no bad thing given it was the best yet. The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 returns with 592bhp and mild-hybrid tech, again you can choose from air or coil suspension, and now you can mix rear-wheel steering with all-wheel drive. Some subtlety has been traded for aggressive design, but few will double-take if it’s de-badged and wearing a dark colour.
The 911 Turbo returns for an eighth instalment, a lesson in Darwinism, but this time the wick’s turned up to 640bhp in Turbo S guise – good for 0-62mph in around 2.7sec and 208mph – and with tech including rear-wheel steering and an eight-speed dual-clutch gearbox. It’d flummox not only the (less than half-as-powerful) 1975 original, but the mighty, F40-rivalling 959 too. All we need to know now is how these two feel on the road. Over the page, join us onboard… ⊲