2026 Audi A6 allroad | UK Review
The reborn, RS6-arched allroad hits greasy, grimy UK roads - still a hit?
So, the Audi A6 allroad is back with a wide-bodied bang. Glimmers of good news have been hard to find anywhere in 2026, least of all a car industry in tumult, yet Ingolstadt’s resuscitation of perhaps its greatest niche product feels like a definitive win. Whether rare-groove cars like this can survive the great VW reset remains to be seen, but let’s enjoy it in the here and now…
NC was positively enamoured after driving it around sunny Corsica – so it seemed pertinent to put it swiftly to the test against the sort of conditions it’s far more precisely targeted at. Namely, a grisly autumnal lap of the UK’s lower reaches, much of it in motorway gridlock with the heated, massaging sports seats working overtime.
Let’s just cut to the chase: it remains pretty imperious. But then with its new, RS6-adjacent design, it writes a very large cheque for itself in the first place. It’s quite a thing to behold – 110mm broader than a standard A6 Avant to help house 74mm-wider tracks – and fails at one of its first hurdles by not slotting into a McDonald’s car parking space, extinguishing any faint desire to negotiate the Drive Thru entirely. Are buyers of £90k-plus Audis sullying themselves with a Big Tasty? It’s something to bear in mind if they are; this car is every bit as supersized as it looks.
A comprehensive suite of parking cameras borders on the vital, then, and they’re of brilliant clarity, even bleeping if the alloys are in danger of kissing a kerb. Handy when those happen to be optional 21-inch Audi Sport items. It’s a bright spot in an otherwise sea of grey inside. Nic touched on this on his return from Corsica; it’s a slightly dour place to be, the inside of this ‘C9’ allroad, not least when British buyers are denied the lovely brown leather of European markets. Our fault for being so S Line obsessed…
Mind you, there’s some nice suede and contrast stitching to covet, your phone maps display within the driver’s instrument binnacle to free up space on the central touchscreen (and reduce distraction time) while the switchable transparency of its pano roof is neat, too. It’s not a pioneering feature – even a Renault Rafale does it – yet it still makes passengers coo.
While anyone wedded to their full-size SUVs might find the allroad a literal step down, those used to their bum skating the ground in something sportier will feel pretty tall in here. There’s a whole 55mm of variance in its air suspension, but the car defaults to its midmost ‘Balanced’ setting for every one of its parameters on startup, and you rarely feel the need to crank anything higher or lower from there. It automatically drops 20mm at high speed anyhow.
At 2.1 tonnes it’s not a particularly dynamic car, as you might expect, and its quattro system favours front-wheel drive much of the time – though it can sling 70 per cent of power to the rear axle if truly needed. Again, no fuss; it acquits itself well in corners and just rides so insouciantly above the ground, unflustered by all but the most rutted of surfaces below, that you do genuinely feel like you’re floating into and out of corners. Deploy ‘Dynamic’ and loosen the ESP to work it harder and you can start to appreciate its innate grip and balance, but it’s not this A6 in its true comfort zone.
While a big, multi-cylinder diesel engine is a welcome treat nowadays, exposure to the fuel is so rare nowadays that the teensy torque band elicits a short acclimatisation period. The V6’s lunge to its 4,700rpm limiter is so brief, I harbour little desire to pull the paddleshifters for manual control, yet nor does it ever want for power or pace. Its 428lb speaks far louder than its 299hp – just don’t expect it feel any quicker than its claimed 5.4-second-to-62mph time, and the V6 begins to get rowdy should you try and match it.
Far more impressive is the 49mpg I average across 500-odd miles of motorways, A roads and rural lanes. Good for over 600 miles on a tank according to the trip meter – sure, diesel’s pricey at the moment, but allroad buyers are likely to value fewer stops on a dingy forecourt than a couple more quid in their offshore account. There’s a subtle e-boost in here now, too, though the engine purrs during most forward motion. It reverses on the motor, however, which feels like an error with no reversing beep to match it. Passersby better see you coming…
All told, it’s a beguiling all-rounder, swallowing a whole kitchen install’s worth of cardboard and depositing it gracefully at the tip before hustling itself down the motorway until your bladder calls a stop – and then wiggling its way to your final destination with just enough dynamism to satisfy, yet not so much it intrudes on the quiet calm inside.
Granted, it should do a lot when it costs so much. A starting price of £70,495 Black Edition ain’t small while the pano roof, B&O stereo and slick OLED taillights that’ll bewitch its bougie buyers are saved for the £81,520 Vorsprung. Add to that a grand’s worth of 21-inch wheels and the brilliant (but £4,715!) ‘Sport Seats plus’, plus a few other trivial goodies, and it’s a £90k car before you know it. Yikes.
Yet with no Mercedes or Volvo to rival it, there’s very little like it outside a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo. And whatever form the new RS6 takes will command a heap more cash again. By borrowing the same, hulking great presence buyers love in their big Audi Sports, this reborn A6 allroad might just sway them to try something comfier and less combative. The rest of us can wait patiently watching for their decadence to descend into the classifieds…
SPECIFICATION | 2026 AUDI A6 ALLROAD QUATTRO TDI VORSPRUNG
Engine: 2967cc, V6 diesel, turbocharged
Transmission: Seven-speed dual clutch, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 299 @ 3,620-3,750rpm
Torque (lb ft): 428 @ 1,500-3,620rpm
0-62mph: 5.4 secs
Top speed: 155mph
Weight: 2,120kg (unladen)
MPG: 46.3-47.9mpg (combined)
CO2: 154-159g/km
Price: £81,520 (£90,335 as tested, including £4,715 Sport Seats plus, £1,025 21in Audi Sport wheels and £775 Firmament Blue paint, among other options)
I'll be waiting for some depreciation to set in at which point this may just replace my 4 year old 530d which BMW don't make anymore and even if they did it would probably be pig ugly. A tdi test drive awaits me.
I pity the fuel.
I'll be waiting for some depreciation to set in at which point this may just replace my 4 year old 530d which BMW don't make anymore and even if they did it would probably be pig ugly. A tdi test drive awaits me.
I pity the fuel.
Do you read a newspaper?
I'll be waiting for some depreciation to set in at which point this may just replace my 4 year old 530d which BMW don't make anymore and even if they did it would probably be pig ugly. A tdi test drive awaits me.
I pity the fuel.
I do like diesels, my daily is diesel but let’s face it, it’s a dead duck for passenger cars.
Two quid a litre, it’s a bit smelly and they have loads of complicated emissions stuff that tends to fail expensively.
I don’t think I would buy another now.
Steelies also don’t have the inner barrel clearance you’d need to clear the front brake discs on the Allroad (which are pretty big at 375mm/14.8”) and once you add the brake caliper, the total clearance diameter jumps to nearly 420mm; remember, this car is considered a ‘high-performance’ vehicle and fully loaded up weighs around 2.4 tonnes, hence its need for larger brakes and therefore bigger wheels.
I'll be waiting for some depreciation to set in at which point this may just replace my 4 year old 530d which BMW don't make anymore and even if they did it would probably be pig ugly. A tdi test drive awaits me.
I pity the fuel.
I do like diesels, my daily is diesel but let s face it, it s a dead duck for passenger cars.
Two quid a litre, it s a bit smelly and they have loads of complicated emissions stuff that tends to fail expensively.
I don t think I would buy another now.
For me...I'd go petrol for fun, diesel for distance(and diesel in a heavy SUV etc), and a small electric car as a local runabout for example I think.
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