I wonder how many thousands of key strokes I have expended being critical of fast Audis in print over the years? Thousands? Millions more likely. I reckon it started a little over 30 years ago, when the company replaced the original quattro with the S2 Coupé. And I didn’t need to review that to know it wasn’t very good: my father bought one to replace a 911 so I already knew.

Then came the first of the RS Audis, the 1994 RS2. Gorgeous to look at, sit in and listen to. But the drive failed to live up to such promise. And that was just the start. Of all those that followed, the only fast family Audi I recall with any genuine affection was the ‘B7’ RS4 Avant built between 2006-08 thanks to the fabulous pairing of its screaming naturally aspirated V8 motor and a Getrag six-speed manual gearbox.

But now, finally, there’s another. I booked the RS6 Performance not because I suspected it might buck the trend of the last 30 years, but simply because I’d not yet made its acquaintance and thought I probably should. The ‘Performance’ in its title suggests it’s a variant from standard but in fact it’s now the only kind of RS6 you can buy. What you can do is opt for coil rather than air springs, ceramic brakes and lightweight wheels with soft-compound tyres to create a kind of RS6 Performance-Performance, but the car I drove was standard and seemed none the worse.

What all Performance RS6s get compared to the now defunct simple RS6 is a 30bhp power boost thanks to bigger turbos for its 4-litre V8, a similar upgrade in torque and, more interesting to me, four-wheel steering and a torque vectoring rear differential.

It’s a great-looking car but, then again, fast Audi estates have never struggled to hoover up attention from street corners. But I particularly like the fact that Audi’s super-clean, almost industrial design has been allowed to grow a few sculptural curves. The result is more characterful, purposeful yet no less easily discernible as an Audi.

It’s fast, ridiculously so in fact, but you knew that already. But even by big V8 standards, it’s tuneful too: Audi has stripped out a load of sound-deadening material, not really to save weight (8kg doesn’t go far in a 2090kg car) nor even really to make it any louder; instead it’s been taken from areas muffling the quality of its sound as if to reinforce exactly what we’ll be missing when its electric replacement comes along.

“It’s a family car and fine driving machine all wrapped into one”

But really that’s all background. What feels so different about this fast family Audi is, well, its feel. Within about a minute I knew I was going to enjoy this more than almost any of its kind that had come before. Actually it was probably less than that. Do this job for long enough and you don’t need more than a few rotations of the tyres to sense a stiff structure off which have been hung well-located wheels subjected to iron-fisted control from its springs and dampers. In that moment you know it’s been set up by people who think like you, and the rest all stems from that.

For a start it rides brilliantly, this ultra-sporting estate easily outpointing many previous generations of long-wheelbase A8 limousines. And that was a pleasant surprise, but what made me want to write this was the way it took me from place to place. It is a point-and-squirt machine no longer. The greatest shame of most RS Audis I’ve driven is that they turn corners into the boring bits, frustrating periods of time that have to be endured before the fun can begin again at the start of the next straight when you can once more unleash whichever fabulous powertrain lurks ahead of you. That imbalance has now been entirely addressed.

If you head west out of the pretty Welsh town of Crickhowell and take the A479 towards Builth Wells, you’ll find a road a car like this should hate. It’s quite narrow in places, with corners that tend to come at you in combinations, with the odd tightening radius. It’s a good road, but not one of the Welsh greats, not least because vast trucks tend to come thundering around corners using more than their fair share of space. Here you need a car whose extremities you can judge by instinct, one that, when asked to suddenly tighten its line by a few degrees, does so both instantly and accurately. A car that will not just ride the bumps well, but the crests and dips too, which is a very different skill set.

This Audi – repeat, Audi – does it all. Agile is the wrong word for it because that summons up thoughts of Porsche Caymans and so on, which would be preposterous. But ‘deft’ is very definitely the right word, and I doubt I’ve ever used it in the context of a big Audi estate before.

And suddenly a kind of car that for so long has seemed a disconnected accumulation of unrelated talents – great engine, looks, sound – became one cohesive whole, a car with no serious shortcomings save its price and eye-watering fuel consumption. In short the family car and fine driving machine all wrapped into one that so many of its forebears promised but ultimately failed to be. More cars tuned with this philosophy in more accessible areas of the model range transform for the better the way we look at fast Audis in future.

---

Audi RS6 Performance

• Price £109,570
• Engine 4 litres, eight cylinders, petrol
• Power 621bhp at 6000rpm
• Torque 627lb ft at 2300rpm
• Weight 2090kg (DIN)
• Power to weight 297bhp per tonne
• Transmission Eight-speed automatic, four-wheel drive
• 0-62mph 3.4sec
• Top speed 174mph (limited)
• Economy 22.1mpg l CO2 285g/km
• Verdict The new fast Audi benchmark.