2008 Audi S6 Test Drive

The Six Gets Serious

The Audi S6's huge engine, well-appointed interior and understated appearance make for an ideal high-speed cruiser.

While test driving the Audi S6, I stopped at my parents’ house for a short visit. This was not a good idea.

First of all, they thought I had gotten a job at a hedge fund and not told them. Then, after dinner, I took my dad for a ride and now he wants one, which is more of a problem for my mom than it is for me. We merely meandered through the neighborhood, but two minutes into the drive, he said, “This car is serious. This is a car for a guy like me.”

To be honest, my dad isn’t all that serious. But his assessment was spot-on. The S6 is a serious automobile. And it’s the kind of car that can make a person develop a serious plan to come up with about $83,000.

As of yet, I have not developed my own plan. In lieu of that, I have come up with a list:

Five Things the Audi S6 Is Dead Serious About

1. Covering long distances in short amounts of time.

2. Exiting toll booths rapidly.

3. Coddling you with high-tech amenities that are unnecessary but which seem absolutely essential when you go back to driving a car without them.

4. Carrying four people and their stuff in comfort.

5. Encouraging you to disengage the traction control and partake in high-dollar hooliganism in quiet residential communities.

I took the S6 on vacation from New York City to Lake Placid, N.Y., and then down to New Jersey, where my parents live. Surely there are few better vehicles for this journey (unless gas mileage is a huge concern). The five-hour drives upstate and back were themselves vacations from steering more quotidian automobiles.

Let’s see what makes the S6 so spectacular.