Childish Question

[4.2lBi-TurboV8]

Ignoring the limiter, how fast will a standard RS6 Avant go? (Bit childish, but I'd love to know!)

[bayliner]

Mr J Clarkson from top gear fame says 200mph when they 1st came out on 02 plate

[Tweaky]

I think that might be a touch hopeful, i would expect to see 180's standard and maybe 190's at stage 3 tune, given enough road....i very much doubt you would get a true 200 out of it without serious power.

[edcase]

Indeed, you will likely see 200mph on the speedo but that translates to more like 175-180mph in real terms. Either way more than enough.

I hit the limiter on mine for the first time at the weekend...more than easily enough!!!

[toasty]

200mph is the magic number eh?
A few mates and me looked at making a 200mph car a whle back, even with good aerodynamics the maths suggest that you need 550bhp at least for that type of speed, I didn't calculate for an RS6, but I'm sure with an RS4 (B5) you need near 600.

I'd say with 450bhp, a drag coeffiecient of 0.35 and frontal area of 2.2 sq metres then the absolute maximum top speed would be about 190mph and that's assuming that gearing and engine curves are optimal to support this - realistically and given that the gearing and curves won't match perfectly, I'd say 180mph was totally realistic.

That's one hell of a top speed for a standard car!!

[MartynC]

Dan makes good sense, drag rises as the cube of the speed (I think) so large amounts of power are required to acheive speeds of that sort of order. I've had my 6 Plus to 175mph (no not on the road officer!) indicated on a Garmin GPS and it was still accellerating......well perhaps gathering speed would be more accurate of the feeling but it still had more to come. EVO magazine had an indicated 185mph out of their test 6 Plus for what it's worth.

MartynC

[toasty]

You put it better than me Martyn.

You are correct.

To go back to my point, it would have been easy to make a 180mph car - relatively speaking of course!!
190 mph is much harder, and 200 much much harder still.

I just wish I could find the old graphs I plotted, they show it quite clearly - but as Martyn says power required is directly proportional to the speed cubed, so a 10% increase in speed requires a 33% increase in power!!!!!

[rs666]

180 mph was easily reached on my way to Nurburgring

[SteveH]

Haven't gone above 150... Was amazed at how it kept on pushing on at a pace but didn't want to push my luck with tyres!

[peterb]

Mr J Clarkson from top gear fame says 200mph when they 1st came out on 02 plate

If I remember correctly, JC's comment was that he ran out of road at 175mph, but that the car felt as though it would keep going up to 200.

[W8PMC]

At the last VMAX i attended, my highest timed speed was 181MPH & the car was still pulling with well over 1Krpm to play with. The speedo was reading 190MPH so i'd hazard a guess that with enough tarmac 200MPH could be achieved.

My car did achieve 203MPH on a rolling road, but given their was little resistance but to counter that the traction was aweful, it proves that the engine could certainly produce over 200MPH, it's just a case of whether the aerodynamics would allow the 2ton barrier to be broken.

You'd at a minimum need about 4 miles of tarmac to test the theory & about 1 mile of braking area.

[Wolverine]

You could always improve aerodynamics by taking the mirrors off, roof aerial, and front wipers .... could make all the difference to achieve the magical 200MPH

[W8PMC]

You could always improve aerodynamics by taking the mirrors off, roof aerial, and front wipers .... could make all the difference to achieve the magical 200MPH

Folding the wing mirrors in achieved a 1mph gain at VMAX

[toasty]

yep,

that would decrease both frontal area and drag coefficient (Cd) would probably make a difference at near 200mph