Unlike BMW and Mercedes, Audi doesn’t make a high-performance RS-badged sedan with a powerful V8 engine. The Ingolstadt company is known primarily for its cool wagons, and although it used to be available, the RS6 sedan has been missing from the roster for many years.
The RS6 is one of the most important Audis of all time. Over the past decade, the RS6 Avant has participated in numerous drag races against the Mercedes-AMG E63 and the BMW M5. Most of them have been lost, partly because the wagon body is heavier than a sedan.
The RS6 was first introduced in 2002. The RennSport or “racing sport” version of the regular A6 was a way for Audi to compete with BMW and Mercedes. Four distinct generations have existed, the C5, C6, C7 and C8.
With the C5 and C6, Audi offered not only the 5-door Avant wagon but also a 4-door sedan. Things started relatively modest in July 2002 with a twin-turbocharged 4.2-liter V8 engine that produced just 444 horsepower and 428 lb-ft (580 Nm). Towards the end of the C5’s life (April to September 2004), Audi offered the first RS6 Plus which added another 30 horsepower, extracted by UK tuner Cosworth.
The C6 was made from 2008 to 2011 and came with the most impressive engine Audi ever put in a sedan. It was a 5.0-liter V10, like a Lamborghini, only it had twin turbo and delivered 571 hp. This made it 70 hp stronger than the BMW M5 V10, a real racing monster.
For some reason, Audi got tired of competing with the M5 and gave up on the sedan. So the C7 (2013-2018) and the C8 (2019-present) don’t have sedan bodies. You can get roughly the same 4.0 TFSI engine in the S6 sedan, but not the body kit, the upgraded brakes, and so on.
We’ve seen lots of custom-made C7 RS6 sedans, but Auditography has filmed the only 2023 Audi RS6 sedan, based on the C8 platform. This car is modified by Ado X Performance, a German tuner, and started life as the average A6 3.0 TFSI.
Widebody conversion of an Audi A6 into an RS6
The most obvious change is at the front, where they had to install an all-new bumper and fenders. The RS6 has a different set of headlights from the A6 and S6, which it borrows from the A7 family. This is similar to how the M3 Touring doesn’t have the same grille and lights as a 3 Series. At the back, they’ve installed the RS6 bumper, which has a large diffuser, a large black mesh pattern, and the trademark quad exhaust system.
Of course, the transition wouldn’t be complete without a widebody. The RS6 wagon is 40mm wider on each side compared to an A6, which means 80mm or just over 3 inches more. It’s got a completely different geometry built around air suspension, lowered stance, and an obvious wheel offset change for the factory 22-inch alloys. Of course, in this particular case, they didn’t use factory wheels.
Ado X Performance also played around with the 4.0-liter, doing a Stage 3 remap and adding a Wagner intercooler to extract 854 horsepower and 828 pound-feet of torque. So not only is the C8 RS6 sedan unique, but it’s also a real sleeper with the potential to go way beyond 200 miles per hour.
