At $64,000, Is This 2018 Audi RS7 Prestige An Arresting Opportunity?

With 560 horsepower on tap, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Audi certainly earns its RennSport badge. Let’s see if this sporty saloon’s price tag also earns our respect in the voting.

We tend to roll our eyes and make that classic Mckayla Maroney face when confronted by an ad in which the seller implies—or outright states—“I know what I have” and has set the price accordingly. With its meager $2,500 asking, most of you found the opposite to be true of the seller of yesterday’s 1986 Chrysler LeBaron turbo convertible, noting that perhaps they didn’t know what they have. That confusion resulted in a solid 92 percent Nice Price win.

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I think one of the most impressive acts of editing—or maybe most egregious—is Kraftwork’s reworking of their 1974 song Autobahn from the 22-minute-long album version into a 3-minute single for radio airplay. Considering the scope and reputation of the song’s subject, the album version is more appropriate and enjoyable.

Germany is not generally known for frivolous excess. It’s a fairly serious country. That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions to that rule, and today’s 2018 Audi RS7 Quattro Prestige is quite an exceptional exception.

The RS7 is the ultimate expression of the A7, a model based on Volkswagen/Audi’s MLB platform and sharing many of its mechanical bits with its kissing cousin, the A6. While that car is a roomy and stately saloon, the A7, and by extension, the RS7, is a sleek and painfully sexy five-door hatchback of more intimate dimensions. At the model’s introduction, I ran into Road & Track’s Dennis Simanaitis attempting to sit in the A7’s back seat and unfortunately being denied the opportunity due to the cabin’s small size and his bad back. Fitting behind the wheel shouldn’t present any problems to anyone, though, and the rewards of taking that opportunity are manyfold.

Much of that is by way of the RS7’s jaw-dropping power. The twin-turbo 4.0-liter all-alloy V8 makes a staggering 560 horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque, with the latter available starting at around 1,750 rpm. That’s all handled by a ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic with Tiptronic shifting and Audi’s excellently-engineered Quattro all-wheel-drive system. Huge brakes and a multi-situation suspension help ensure the rest of the car keeps up.

Having spent some time behind the wheel of one of these myself, I can attest to it being some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on or off. For public streets or the track, however, I recommend clothes on.

This one is a Prestige model which means it’s top-o-the-heap when it comes to status and added features. Notable among those are the carbon fiber trim sprinkled liberally throughout both the exterior and the car’s cabin, as well as a Bang & Olufsen sound system, as well as seating upholstery that looks like it came out of a Sci-Fi space movie.