ABT RS4-R: My Sweet Nightmare

12 October 2018 Redazione News, Tested, Tuning

ABT RS4-R

MY SWEET NIGHTMARE

Words and photos by Alessandro Marrone

Every morning, a supercar wakes up and knows that for keeping its place on top of the food chain, it will have to run faster than a few sedans or some anabolic wagons. Paraphrasing what has become a catchphrase adapted in the most varied arguments, I realize how it is a tremendously difficult time to be a supercar. Having found that cars have feelings too and that they both experience joy and sadness, we find ourselves in such a period of mechanical and technological development that you do not have to be a two-seater with a body close to the ground for touching shivering speeds. Audi, along with its inevitable German comrades made a real mantra out of this, but if I’m in Kempten it’s for something more special than usual.

Just as I’m filling the tank with 100 octane and while liters pass inexorable from the fuel pump to the car – thus lightening my wallet – I notice some my legs are trembling, my eyes can hardly rest, flying greedily among the innumerable details of the car that soon I would unleash on the Autobahn a few miles from here. Not even a mole – as blind as it is – would think this is a standard Audi, not even an RS4, but the one that ABT has renamed RS4-R, a simple letter more that does not steal too much time and still allows you to imagine that its aesthetic improvement is a way to prepare yourself for the huge performance jump obtained with the work of the German tuner, a historical signature that for years has been responsible for making Audi and VW (and also Seat and Skoda) the aforementioned nightmares for every supercars out there.

If Audi, in collaboration with Porsche, gave birth to a new way of intending a car for the family, perfectly suited to load children and luggage and take them on vacation, perhaps in the shortest possible time, thanks to the changes that made it a station wagon with the heart of a real sports car, ABT has taken care to move punctually beyond the bar of everything that was already partly removed from being something rational. An Audi wagon, the first RS4 born in 1999, hid under the bonnet a 381hp twin-turbo V6, a solid sound and an aggressive look made of enlarged fenders and aerodynamic appendages that set the light at first glance. This is where ABT intervened, initially adding about 19hp (even obtaining 450hp on a particular occasion), while with the following model, presented in 2005, Audi introduced a V8 engine, thanks to which the increase of ABT allowed to reach 480hp. Today, having reached the third generation of RS4 and coming back to a twin-turbo V6, ABT has presented the RS4-R that I have in my hands, which delivers 530hp instead of the 450hp of the original model. It’s not just a power increase, because it’s coupled to the whole series of mechanical upgrades, making it a big racing go-kart, ideal for the craziest school run you’ve ever experienced.

I love the RS6, but I have always been a strenuous RS4 aficionado, which despite losing two cylinders and a few horses, saves some weight and centimeters, all in favor of greater maneuverability and a dynamism closer to that of a traditional sports car. But today everything is as if it had ended up in a crazy blender, the RS4-R from ABT is wide, low and so sharp that you are afraid to cut yourself by passing close to it. The aerodynamic kit immediately jumps to the eye from any angle you look at it and the countless ABT badges really scattered everywhere mend that you’re dealing with something very special. They have produced 50 units of this and all of them have already been sold. At the front, the Audi grille is made even more aggressive, thanks to the new bumper with lower blade and vortex carbon fiber fins. The black rims are immense 21 inches with 295/25 Dunlop Sport Maxx GT tires and fill every inch of space between the wheels themselves and the wheel arches. At the back there is a huge carbon diffuser with two pairs of pipes on each corner, again covered in carbon – in the middle the red RS4-R badge, just to discourage any fool behind you on the fast lane.

Every time I find myself in front of such a special car, I end up in that typical inner war between the desire to admire all the details and the need to get on board and drive, taking advantage of every moment of a day that fortunately is driving away the clouds that until a couple of minutes were promising heavy rain. Opening the door and jumping at the wheel, you’ll notice once again that the care taken by ABT is immense and in addition to the fantastic leather and alcantara seats with hexagonal stitching and red logos, there is a lot of carbon fiber that enhances an already exceptional dashboard. Obviously nothing is missing and so there is the Virtual Cockpit and a gear knob coated in carbon, but what convinces me to not linger over is the roar emitted by the exhaust as I start its mighty engine. I immediately set the car in “Dynamic” and select the manual mode for changing gears, the engine fluids are now warm and entering the motorway appears to me as coming back on a racing track after a pit stop, maybe during the last lap of a Grand Prix fought against the most fierce of rivals. The throttle pedal reaches the floor and the apocalyptic noise out there invades the passenger compartment. While I am literally pressed to the seat, I climb the following gears which enter more quickly than the blink of an eye and are accompanied by a real explosion coming from the four exhaust tips at the back. If I had to get € 1 for every time I intentionally shifted gears for getting that bombing again and again, I could buy a whole block in Beverly Hills.

But California and my mental problems aside, identifying the main ingredient of the RS4-R is not an easy task. If the acceleration is prodigious and allows you to burn the 0-100 kph in just 3.8 seconds (0.3 less than the standard RS4), braking figures are equally phenomenal thanks to the Audi ceramic system. The feeling of speed is not transmitted as happens at the wheel of a small coupe and you are well over 250 per hour without realizing it. The beauty is that, even “traveling” at similar speeds, you just need to downshift a couple of gears and sink your foot on the gas that the RS4-R splashes forward as if really wanted to take off, all without even the slightest effort. And here is another factor to say the least incredible: the chassis, which thanks to a suspension system with Sport Stabilizers makes this station wagon of about 1700kg rigid as a sheet of steel. If you initially look for some confidence entering a specific corner at 80, after an hour of driving you understand that the same curve can be tackled at no less than 120 kph, without the car body moving a single millimeter. Direction changes occur in a flash and you do not feel any uncertainty from any mechanical apparatus, the only thing that sometimes makes you slow down a bit is the reduced height from the ground of the front bumper, which will involve more attention on some roads and especially during maneuvers.

The Drehmoment, as indicated by one of the many functions available with the Virtual Cockpit, allows you to unleash 690Nm (+90 compared to the original) to the ground on both axles, eliminating even the slightest possible loss of power. The 2.9 V6, pushed by two turbos and coupled to an 8-speed double clutch transmission is the beating heart of this lethal weapon built under the guise of a family perfectly able to accommodate 5 people on board, their luggage and, if desired, still able to travel in “Comfort” mode without necessarily violating the road below you. But we know that it would be like forcing a serial killer to keep his knives under his coat and it’s never right to repress your inner nature, that’s why, after blasting the first few miles on the Autobahn, I decided to go towards some less busy road that enhances best the perfect marriage between engine and frame.

This is where I am finally kidnapped by its primal behavior, by its innate ability to satisfy my most demanding requests and expectations that in any other case would be out of place when talking about a wagon or even a saloon for what’s matter. Not here, the RS4-R is everything you would expect from a super sports car, but on the body of a family car nearly five meters long. It seems lighter than it really is and proportionally it is faster than I would have expected and with this I am not referring to the 280 kph of top speed (like with the RS Dynamic Pack), but the way it throws you from 60 to 160. A jump of 100 kph burned in the blink of an eye where you keep your sight concentrated between the tachometer and a road that is becoming smaller and more blurred. In the same way and with the same fluency it allows you to brake 50 meters after what you normally do and to take turns as if you were clinging to a track.

The ticket for this train is that of a limited edition of only 50 specimens, all already sold, but that does not mean that you can’t bring your own RS4 and transform it according to your tastes, ticking the rich ABT price list, ready to satisfy your every need. Speaking of money, a complete car would start at about € 113,000, with the cost of the kit sitting at around € 30,000 + € 3,200 for the installation, all 19% VAT included. Going into detail, major upgrades such as suspension costs about € 2,000 (excluding VAT), while to have the special carbon fiber shell seats you need at least € 2,240 – € 1,000 for the carbon front spoiler and at least € 600 for the wheel arch with air intake and carbon fin. These are absolutely not exaggerated figures, especially if you take into account the experience of ABT in the fine tuning world, but what is really crazy is the fact that a single vehicle really manages to bring together the practical side of a family car with the animalistic side of a proper sports car ready to spank any supercar in front of you. And then there is that incredible roar of the exhaust, a deep primitive scream that seems coming from the most remote corner of the universe. This sweet nightmare of mine torments me at night, I need to hear that thunder again, rout the particles of the atmosphere, turn around and catch that look that tries to hide under the habit of what in the beginning was (already) a hyper station wagon. This is something that goes further, an alien coming from a dreamlike world made of carbon fiber, Autobahn and new decibel thresholds, still unknown to our wretched world.