HOW ABOUT A DRAG RACE WITH THE ICONIC AMG GT 63S, THE AUDI RS6 PERFORMANCE AND THE HEAVYWEIGHT ICE-ASSISTED BMW M5?
Last year we saw so many range-topping performance cars hit the market. These cars have led the charge (haha) in combining powerful ICE motors with a power boost from an electric motor or two. The resulting performance has been mad, performance cars have been able to keep up to supercars. The three big players have been having some fun match-ups with their range-toppers, and the crew at Carwow have assembled a few of the most popular ones to test them in a heads-up drag race. We’ve seen these cars perform before, but this match-up keeps fans of the German Big 3 happy - Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, although in this match up the Ingolstadt and the Affalterbach entrants don’t have any electric assistance, they’re pure ICE beasts that have been fiddled with by the factory to be top performers. In this mix we have one of the best-performing longroofs available in the form of the Audi RS6 Performance - it comes at a hefty price, of course. In this completely unscientific test, the Audi is powered by a twin-turbocharged 4.0 litre V8 that’s been tuned to push out a mighty 436 kW of power with torque up at a decent 850 Nm, perfect to make a car of that size - weighing in at 2,075 kg - perform just right. It also has an 8-speed auto transmission that helps send that power to all four wheels via a new-gen Quattro system. In this match-up, the car is in the middle of the price war, well in the UK anyway with a price tag of £116,000. On our side of the pond it lists with a starting price of R2,370,300 but with all the tasty options that total is just shy of R3,200,000 - about R70,000 a month on instalments. Insanity, but at least it’s fast and looks better than the other cars in this test. Of course, the looks are subjective, but if you think differently, you’re simply wrong. The BMW M and Mercedes-AMG in this fight do look good, but Audi takes it.
The Affalterbach offering in this mix is what purists like to call the last of the proper AMGs - the AMG GT 63 S. This is the one that was released before the current one that got all the AMG purists up in arms after they dropped the iconic roaring V8 for a turbocharged 2.0 litre 4-pot. In this Mercedes-AMG the twin-turbocharged 4.0 litre V8 is rated at a strong 470 kW of power with a hefty 900 Nm of torque. The AMG has that sublime 9-speed auto that sends power to all four wheels, and the combo weighs in at 2,135 kg. It’s a sought-after car these days, and until the Mercedes-AMG techs have the 4-pot side of the power making things replaced with a V8 again, it will stay that way. The one of these three that has some electric assistance is the all-new BMW M5, the same one that everyone complains about being too heavy even though they’re not the target market and couldn’t afford one if they wanted to. That extra weight is thanks to the electrification side of the powerplant. The new M5 features a twin-turbocharged 4.4 litre V8 coupled to an electric motor and the combined power output is up at a mighty 535 kW of power with a whopping 1,000 Nm of torque. That high torque is the telltale sign that there’s electric assistance. In this case, the power goes to all four wheels via an 8-speed auto transmission. It is heavy, breaking the scales at 2,435 kg, but that mad torque more than makes up for it. Well, it might or might not, that’s the point of this Carwow video, to see how it compares. We’d still take the Audi no matter the outcome of all of this…
Take a look at the YouTube video that pits some of the coolest range-topping German performance cars up against each other in a heads-up drag race over the usual quarter mile stretch and also the longer half mile to give them a chance to stretch their legs: New BMW M5 v RS6 Perf v AMG GT 63: DRAG RACE | carwow
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