FAST FLEET

After a year and 22,000 miles on our fleet, the hardworking RS6 departs having cemented its status as the definitive everyday super-estate

- Stuart Gallagher

IT'S GONE. KY74 EGJ HAS DEPARTED EVO'S FAST Fleet, leaving not only a significant physical gap in the car park but also a notable mental one in my grey matter. There are faster, more exotic, more powerful, more expensive cars that flow through our hands, but after 50 weeks and 22,000 miles an RS6 Performance is an impossibly tough act to follow when it comes to the everyday performance car.

No, you don't require 621bhp in an everyday car. A four-wheel-drive system is also overkill if we're being honest. And 22-inch wheels and Continental SportContact 7 UHP tyres? Not really necessary. Brakes the size of dinner plates that generate enough heat to warm a three-bed semi when you're hauling this Audi's 2220kg (on our scales) kerb weight down from any meaningful speed? Actually, they were very much required. Yet the RS6 got under my skin so much that I reached the last page of my elaborate book of excuses for why I needed to hang on to it. I even celebrated another puncture (its third) as it meant I could reschedule its collection to a later date.

A year from now we'll see the next generation of RS6. It will be hybrid-powered and its internal combustion engine could have six or eight cylinders. Cross everything and hope the powertrain from Bentley's Conti GT Speed finds a home between the new RS6's blistered arches.

That's still 12 months away, though, and I'm meant to be discussing the last dozen, so here goes. The C8 RS6's thuggish looks aren't actually as offensive when painted Ascari Blue and finished with Neodymium Gold alloy wheels (with red calipers, natch). When clean (which it was on occasion) it looked sensational. Imposing, confident, head-turning. When filthy (nine out of the 12 months) it looked like an extra from MobLand.