BMW M3 Touring vs Audi RS6 | Which is the ultimate fast estate car?
what is the ultimate faster state car the BMW M3 touring or the Audi RS6 performance keep watching to find out it seems like every month now there's another unveil of a new Fast SUV they're tall they're heavy and they're rarely in oil painting but they're always very popular which is why manufacturers make so many of them however if you want something very fast that's also blessed with excellent practicality then there's another better way of doing it welcome to the Audi RS6 and the BMW M3 touring right now they're the finest examples of fast State cars that money can buy and today I'm going to tell you which one is better now I've also brought along my esteemed colleague Mr Ben Barry who is not only a connoisseur of fast State cars but he's also been running one of these the M3 touring for the last few months so you should know everything there is to know about dailying this lovely green car and I assume you enjoyed it I did yeah I mean I've been running it for the last 6 months or so 7 ,000 miles and uh I just it's such a complete car I love it it's a fun thing to drive it's got a real Wildside when you switch it into rear wheel drive mode but then I've loaded it with luggage the family Christmas presents driven it through you know the winter some pretty fou conditions and and really lent on its all wheeel drive so very very complete car would say yeah good I'm jealous thing is with the M3 touring it's not quite a like for likee rival with the RS6 yes they're both FAS States but they're priced and sized slightly differently to demonstrate the latter we thought we'd line the two cars up and while the M3 touring isn't exactly small the RS6 is 20 cm longer 5 cm wider and 1.5 CM taller it's also about 200 kg heavier at 2,90 kg we can also see that while the RS6 doesn't have the handy opening boot window it does have a little more space for luggage and passengers in the rear seats so if you're the kind of person that prioritizes luggage and passenger space above all else then get the RS6 or better still let's go to superb however while the BMW may be smaller than the RS6 it is also cheaper starting from just under 88,000 versus the Audi which is £5,000 and as Ben is about to tell you it really isn't that much difference in Cabin quality so we can't talk about this interior without talking about these carbon fiber seats the part of the ultimate pack so when this car was specked that ultimate pack was just under £12,000 if you get them separately they're just under £4,000 now and I think they look fantastic they they hold you really nicely once you're into them very comfortable and supportive I've done long Journeys in this car and and found them great and I love this seating position very BMW extremely low down on the ground and and just absolutely perfect I think one thing I would say is uh they're pretty firm when you climb into them so very rock hard edges here that that can make them a bit uncomfortable and when I tried the standard seats recently actually they don't look quite as good but I think all things considered in terms of that comfort of of getting in and out of the car and and the cost I think I would stick with the standard seats now this generation of three series grew by 41 mm in the back so actually if you're thinking about the RS6 and and there's more space in the RS6 well there is but there isn't quite the difference that there used to be and the space in the back of this you know there's plenty of room for adults back here so it's definitely an all round Family Choice the M3 touring has always had this curved display infotainment system but when the M3 first launched the saloon and the M4 Coupe it came with two separate screens so I I do like this system I think it looks really good um there are a few compromises on it I would say though as well in terms of the climate menu That's All Digital now so you've got physical buttons for for clearing the screen and and the rear window but everything else you have to go on the screen as as these things go actually it's a good interface you you press the buttons up and down to to adjust the temperature you have to dip into this climate menu press the button here and you've got things like control over the seats and stuff ultimately I think I prefer physical buttons but but as these things go this is pretty good we've also got I'm not so sure about all the tabs on this screen up here there a bit of a mess of tabs um to to sort through and and go through so I could live without that I love the M1 and M2 buttons on on this screen so if if you know your M cars you know that you can group your prefer es um in M1 and M2 so for instance things like suspension engine and steering stiffness even brake pedal firmness you can group that under your M1 and M2 buttons after setting them up down here so you press set up group them all under under here so engine chassis steering brake and also the the four-wheel drive system MX Drive which can go between four-wheel drive rear wheel drive and also four-wheel drive sport the one thing I have found from living with this car on a daily basis is that I've got my daily settings under M1 and kind of maybe more like track settings under M2 and there've been times when I've thought I mean Comfort damping but I want really to go to sport damping for a twist your road or something in the last generation the f80 you could just press the damper button here but on that moment you kind of have to go back into setup find your chassis go to sport so it's a little bit more of a faf in terms of that but but overall yeah it works well you can also change the display on the instrument binnacle by pressing this m modee button here and then scrolling through the different modes I think that's a little bit odd to be honest because one it says M mode which makes you think you're changing the driving modes and also really with it being this instrument binnacle it would make more sense like Audi does to have the control up here so you press M mode and then you scroll through Road sport or track to be honest because it's down there I've generally just left it in road so now climb in into the Audi RS6 and the cabin is actually very similar to a regular Audi A6 but then that's no bad thing because it is a very nice place to sit and it is very high quality there's a few different details we've got the Alcantara sedy feeling material on the steering wheel which is very nice indeed we've got different gearshift panels there's different graphics on the digital dashboard display and there's also some nice details such as the carbon on the door the stick itching and on the carpets as well so you know that you're in an RS6 but it is quite a subtle change now the infotainment system I think is one of the best on the market it's super easy to use it's spread across two screens and although it perhaps isn't quite as Snappy as the BMWs and there isn't perhaps as many options it does all the important things really well indeed and as I said it's just really straightforward which is what you want from an infotainment system now the seats in this RS6 are very different to the ones in the BMW Ben likes the seats in the BMW I like them as well actually but I know a lot of people that don't like them they think they're too serious and if you were going to get the standard seats they'd be more similar to these because they're nowhere near as aggressive with the bolstering and they look a lot more like conventional car seats but I think these do hold you in pretty nicely they look quite cool the stitching as well and they're very comfortable on a long journey so no complaints about where I'm sitting the driving position well I don't think you can go quite as low as you can in the BMW that's one of the big features is how low you can sit in that but it doesn't feel like you're sitting too high either when you're in the lowest position so I think it's a decent compromise in here I also want to point out the RS mode button on the steering wheel so in the M3 touring you've got um M1 and M2 two different buttons on this you just got one button but that allows you to access your rs1 and rs2 preset Drive modes now just like the BMW you can't change those modes on the Fly using physical buttons because there aren't any at all you have to go into the menu system which is a bit of a shame but then as I said it doesn't lose out to the BMW in that respect what it does mean is that you can access your favorite Drive modes if you spy a good road or a roundabout that you want to go into a healthy speed and you can just click it and it brings you into a firmer suspension better throttle response better gearbox response all of those things so that's very good so overall a lovely place to sit some subtle reminders that you're in the topof the range RS6 model and it does the basics right so pretty much like the M3 touring I don't think there's a huge amount to split the two cars in this respect clearly we needed to investigate further to come up with a winner so Ben Brave the rain and rediscovered why he's such a big fan of the BMW M3 always love my M3s but I have to admit when I went on the Press launch for the previous generation the f80 in 2014 I did come away a little bit confused it was the first one with a twin turb charged engine so just like this car it was a 3 l twin turbo straight six but it had a very sort of dies turbo diesel character to it both in in its sound signature and the way it delivered its power in you know quite low down and encourage you to to short shift and that generation I also thought they drove like trucks especially at first they felt quite heavy and um just just a bit sort of flat footed really so the brilliant thing about this car is it feels really light on its feet yet it's 1865 kilos Den for the for the M3 touring that's a good 200 kilos or more heavier than the previous model but the reason it feels so light on its feet key part of that is the steering it's very very quick off center it's very light light to the point I would switch into the sport mode to give it a bit more meat and it's just very responsive and it really snaps this car alive and gives it a lot of energy the other big step was with this engine it's the s58 engine so so still 3 l twin turbo straight 6 but it sounds much better than it did before it's got a much more organic kind of natural BMW straight 6 sort of sound and I think it's just got they've just re-calibrated it so you've still got that low down torque but it drip feeds in in a much more natural sort of way so if you're daily driving it you can short shift and use a torque but if you want to wind it right out it'll do that too so really encourages to reach for those sort of high notes in this engine in a way that the other car didn't o now we've got it in the four-wheel drive mode at the moment so as you probably know new M3 first one with with optional all-wheel drive it's standard in the case of the M3 touring got three modes regular four-wheel drive four-wheel drive Sport and fully rear whe drive now I've got it in four-wheel drive sport at the moment which is how I've got it in my M1 button for daily driving so traction control and it it's mid setting so a little little bit of extra Freedom little bit of extra leash and it's a really really potent combination actually cuz this car's got a nice strong front end encourages you even when it's a bit wet like this or very wet like this that you've got the bite of the front to get it tucked in and you've also got you know the security of all wheeel Drive but a very rear biased feeling so very kind of adjustable handling balance as you can probably see there and um yeah just a great sort of combination of traction with that kind of adjustability that I really love I think the damping works really well in this car you know it flows cross country very nicely it's got a lot of compliance to it um I usually have it in the comfort setting sometimes on a Road like this you can start to feel it maybe becoming a little bit loose particularly at the rear in which case you know sometimes sort of switch it up to sport tightens it up but you do get that sort of trade-off in ride quality so most of the time I am generally in this Comfort mode we've got the carbon ceramic brakes on this car as part of the M pro pack I think they are a good upgrade especially on a car as heavy as this I have noticed that during the time I I've had this car the pedal seems to have got a bit longer so I just dab it with my left foot there it's it's it's quite a lot of travel before it picks up but ultimately strong stopping power and um and you know good modulation other than that initial kind of bite I would say the gearbox we've got an 8-speed Auto gearbox but it does it you know as versus you know the original Dual clutch gearbox when when the M3 the f8 came in and the the previous generation I'm getting my uh my what is it e92 the V8 model with dual clutches this doesn't quite have that snap but it's a very very good compromise in that you got very very Punchy gear shifts in fact of these three settings I generally have on the second one because I find the third one bit unnecessarily Punchy driving around in the wet like this I am aware of how much grip I've got and and the the feel and when it's starting to slip but I would say overall it is perhaps a little bit more isolated than I would want so I'd want a bit more sort of texture through the steering just to get an even clearer sense of what's going on so on the flip side of that I think the downside of having this car be so entertaining on a road like this is it can be you know quite stiff jointed at low speed and you do get some Road raar uh you know at higher speed and things like that so it's not the perfect daily but it is a brilliant do everything sort of family wagon as predicted then the M3 touring is as exciting to drive as a bmwm car should be but can the Audi RS6 swap out some of that performance for better usability to find out I rode shotgun with Ben and quickly realized that in a straight line at least there's been no compromise on outright speed it it feels quicker than the M3 touring I mean it's got more power 621 brake horsepower versus 53 and then 621 foot of torque versus 4799 yeah I think he's got bigger turos in this car so it takes a little bit of time to get up and running but once it does it really kicks hard you know that mid-range all that extra torque even though this car is quite a lot heavier it just really gives you that sort of shove doesn't it it's a lot of power no it really is and I think because they've taken away I think it's about 8 kilos of sound deadening from the engine bay you can really hear that extra Rumble it feels more rockus than I remember on the pre performance version it's a nice exhaust note isn't it it's uh I mean I really like the M3 I like that I think it's improved a lot over the previous M3 as well but you cannot beat that sort of V8 Rumble that this car's got yeah it's just in that mid-range shove and the sound just feels more authentic with the BMWs you can tell it's being piped in and it's not as authentic it's not as fizzy at the top I think in this but that oh yeah that Rumble in the mid-range is fantastic wow really picks up and goes doesn't it I think versus the M3 is that it's very very Punchy in a straight line it's not as adapt in the corners though it just hasn't as you'd expect you know but it's just not got that bite okay so you think it's it's the front end bite where you think it's lacking versus the M3 then yeah you the traction it's it's very much more four-wheel drive feeling than the M3 in terms of Distributing power yeah evenly so if I accelerate there it just hooks up and goes and actually because there was a bit of lag there as well it just was slightly dead in that corner but it's generally you've got that feeling that uh it's it's more evenly distributed between all four wheels but it's not keying into the corner as you turn in so that's kind of inhibiting confidence more than the idea that it's going to spit sideways yeah know no I get and you don't think the new diff cuz that can send up to 80% of the power to the back that's not really making as much of a difference as you'd think it would I think you can feel it going towards the back but it's certainly it's certainly not as extrovert as the M3 I would say yeah yeah and in terms of usability how do you think this compares to the M3 touring because the ride feels pretty good to me I mean we're on the optional three-way adjustable damper it's Standard air on this but this is top specs we've got those FY dampers this this is ky's so it is standard on air but this is on on KY so You' got the diagonally interl dampers and as a daily I think that's where this car really kind of stretches and and makes a case for itself it's really comfortable the seats are more comfortable that the suspension is really cushy what I have been finding is that I'll have it in Comfort around town and and it's great but I I struggle to find a mode that's just right for me when I start to d f so so it's got that stretch to usability but I feel the lack versus the M3 when I come to twisty at Corners I want to ask you about the steering as well because the BMW steering is incredibly sharp some people might say a little bit too quick and too sharp this looking at your inputs seems a bit different yeah an Audi engineer actually said they thought the M3 steering was too quick this to me I I don't like this steering basically there's something odd going and presume it's they they how's Progressive steering I'm not getting just not getting the sense of turning the car into the corner that I I hoped I would um just making that the front end's not biting as well as it could and also the steering is just not quite just not very natural feeling for me it's not as clean no what do you think on the tires um I'm not yeah it's difficult to know I'm not I I I think I don't like oh dear oh dear so that was under steer and over steer pretty much almost at the same time there oh yeah quite a combination yeah so that was just on the edge of being front limited and then it started to come around so I prefer just having a cleaner front end and being able to sort out the rear which the M3 does I mean what I like about this is that it feels when we're going along here at about 7 or 81 yeah it's quite composed and it feels like it's well damped but then when you start to go a little bit harder that's when it starts to feel like this is an optimally 810 car and if you go further than that that's when you'll start to feel its struggle more than you would going Beyond 810 in the BMW yeah it feels like he got a heavy engine in the front and and as you turn it into corners and you got some tricky undulations and stuff it just starting to move then a little bit wasn't it but the body control starts to become too loose for me and actually is a compromise and what the RS6 is good at is knowing what people actually want and how they use the car and I think it's it is Optimum for that kind of person who wants something quick they're not going to spend ages hardly anytime hooning around corners and stuff they want a quick capable car and that's what it does but when you start to put something this big and two tons down an narrow Tristy Road you do start to feel its limitations in in terms of body control and when I go into auto mode I also start to feel when I'm driving quickly I start to feel like there's not the mode isn't quite there for me whether it's Comfort whether it's Auto whether it's Dynamic it's just just not quite a sweet spot I think optional carbon brakes anything to say about those they let's give them a try should we if I stop now that's stopping more than two tons that quickly pretty strong y how's your stomach all right yeah good yeah I just had lunch but no that worked pretty well um okay so the brakes are excellent but from a dynamic point of view is there anything that you prefer about the RS6 to the M3 touring cuz I'm getting the feeling that the point of this is that it is perhaps an everyday estate car it's on a level maybe even a little bit better but when it comes to the Dynamics the M3 has got pretty much a clean sweep yeah I don't think there's anything if I there's no reason that I would take this down a favorite road versus the M3 to to enjoy driving it I think the M3 does have it pretty soundly whipped in that case but yeah it's again it's that priority that that Audi has put on this being the daily driver and probably meeting more of a typical driver's needs and you know if I was to put my family in one car and take them on on a longer trip I'd put them in this car so you know what what do you actually want and I think this is really well judged in in so many ways having spent a lot of time in both the M3 and the RS6 Ben and I both agreed on two key points the BMW feels like a performance car in an estate body while the Audi feels like an estate with a rocket ship engine what's more if like many buyers your fast state will go alongside another performance car in your two or three car garage the RS6 with its Superior comfort and space might make more sense however if it's your only car the M3 touring is the best option because it delivers a marketly better driving experience with little in the way of usability compromises as such it is the winner of this test and the car that both of us agreed would be the one we' spend our hard-earned cash on do you agree with our verdict well let us us know in the comments section below and while you're at it make sure you subscribe to the car magazine Channel and turn your notifications on so you don't miss any future videos
2024-04-25 17:58
