Ready to Rock

The Audi RS 6 is a station wagon, sure, but it doesn’t feel like one behind the wheel

- Hannah Elliott

It would be wrong to call the Audi RS 6 Avant a supercar.

With seating for five, enough space for a family of Saint Bernards, and that unmistakably long “shooting brake” roofline, it’s a bona fide station wagon, offered in 2020 for the first time in the U.S. It joins the Mercedes-Benz AMG E 63 wagon and Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo in the scant group of luxury wagons Americans can buy without performing the bureaucratic gymnastics required to import one of the (many) such models offered in Europe.

But one could be forgiven for choosing Audi AG’s roughly $120,000 grocery-getter instead of something more exotic. Driving it recently up that roller coaster known as Deer Creek Road in Malibu, Calif., I had the distinct impression that I’d somehow switched cars between the time I watched the RS 6 pull up and when I got inside.