The California Double plan (and why it went north)
The idea behind a California Double is brilliantly straightforward: take advantage of the Golden State’s ridiculous geography and manage to ski and surf on the same day. It’s proper bucket-list material. Particularly for Brits, where the nearest equivalent is a pre-lunch session at the Milton Keynes snow dome followed by an afternoon getting battered by the wave machine at the local lido. But this time, Mother Nature isn’t exactly helping Top Gear’s ski-to-surf mission.
The original route was to carve first tracks at sunrise at Big Bear Mountain - only a few hours east of Los Angeles - then sprint to the coast and flash shakas on Malibu’s party waves by sunset. Only, skiing requires snow. And thanks to global warming/an unseasonably warm autumn [delete to match personal opinion], there isn’t any. So we’ve had to point the whole plan north. Properly north. Up near San Francisco, to Mammoth Mountain - a long way from LA’s kombucha enemas and goat yoga. As if that wasn’t enough, the clocks have gone back too, so we’re down an hour of usable daylight before we’ve even started. Brilliant.
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- Words: Rowan Horncastle / Photography: James Lipman
Audi RS6: the hyper estate that bends time
Fortunately, we’ve brought the ultimate outdoors pursuit vehicle to connect the dots and cheat the clock: the new Audi RS6. Sitting on a grimy crust of snow, it looks furious - properly furious. But don’t confuse this fourth-generation RS6 with an A6 Avant wearing a resting-bitch-face expression. Only the front doors, roof and tailgate are shared with a regular-spec A6. Everything else is loaded with menace: pumped-up panels that are a huge 80 mm wider than standard, a scowling face that nods back to the ’84 Sport quattro, and tailpipes like bazookas. All of it adds up to a presence that’s hard to ignore.
It needs that, too, because it’s trying to tempt the unconverted - the SUV-loving heathens. Also known as “Americans”.
“Nice hatchback, bro!” a panda-faced skier says while we’re shuffling through the lift queue.
“It’s an estate.”
“A what, bro?”
Yes, the estate - or “wagon”, as they call it over here - is a format that simply doesn’t compute in the States. In short, they don’t sell. Yet for the first time in its 25-year history, Audi’s go-faster division is rolling the dice and bringing its ludicrously rapid five-door family estate to the USA. Happily, it arrives armed with the sort of figures number-obsessed Yanks can’t resist: BIG ones.
Up front sits a 4.0-litre bi-turbo V8, and the RS6 fires its 592 bhp and 590 lb ft (about 800 Nm) through an eight-speed automatic and all four wheels. The result is 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 3.6 seconds and a 306 km/h (190 mph) top end if you tick the “Vorsprung” pack. The boot will also take 1,680 litres of kit - in this case, 1,680 litres of early-season ski excuses as I snap off my planks, sling them in the back, and slice into Mammoth’s sharp air to a bassy V8 soundtrack.
A curious stab of throttle sends the revs swinging around the new retro hockey-stick dial, but the exhaust note doesn’t crack like the old cars - there’s less thunder and less mischief than before (curse you, WLTP). Still, it attracts attention. “Sick car, dude!” a snowboarder hollers from a distance.
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Coming down from Mammoth Mountain’s ski station - roughly 2,740 metres up - the blood eventually stops rushing around our heads. And the roads here aren’t like European ski-resort lanes. There are no frantic school coaches wrestling with snowchains on the wrong side of a skinny strip of tarmac. Instead, the roads are broad, smooth and flowing, curling through towering pine forests lit with syrupy golden light. Finally, we drop to the valley floor and join the road that will skewer our whole day: US Highway 395.
US Highway 395 to Malibu: heat, canyons and the Pacific
Tracking along the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, the 395 is California’s spine - a road-trip thread that stitches together some of the highest, lowest, hottest, deepest and oldest parts of America. It also gives Jamie the photographer and me time to sink into quilted seats and take in the RS6’s cabin.
If you’ve noticed interiors becoming relentlessly screen-heavy in recent years, the RS6 is exhibit A. It’s a massive leap from the previous generation - partly because the world has gone display-mad since 2013, but also because the materials now feel like proper sporting luxury. There’s double glazing, haptic glass, carbon fibre, and an Alcantara-trimmed gear selector that’s strangely satisfying to stroke… a bit like a bald cat.
We dial things back into Road Trip Plod mode, and the RS6 chills out accordingly. It’s not as blunt an instrument as its predecessor - that car was essentially a V8 warhead with a boot bolted on. This one feels more layered and more clever. There’s cylinder deactivation, an eager coasting mode and 48V mild-hybrid assistance. Although “hybrid” needs a pinch of salt: the boot-mounted battery doesn’t drive the car, but it does provide a handy smear of greenwash - something to mention to the hemp-undies, body-odour brigade before they lob a tin of paint at you for owning a V8.
The ride has improved as well. Despite running sports suspension (steel springs with three-way adjustable dampers rather than the standard adaptive air setup) and enormous 22-inch wheels, it keeps a surprisingly civilised stride.
Being able to channel up to 85 per cent of oomph to the rear means you can still cut some shapes
Even so, the 395 can be maddening. With jagged mountains dropping into a flat basin of seemingly endless heat and emptiness, it’s exactly the sort of smooth, arrow-straight, deserted tarmac that 320 km/h (200 mph) cars were built for. Unfortunately, it’s also crawling with sniper-accurate police armed with radar guns. So we sit at 105 km/h (65 mph), then claw back time by diving into a gloriously low-rent - and genuinely delicious - burger joint in a Bishop trailer park.
After that, it’s off onto the dusty tracks and geological oddness of the Alabama Hills. You know, purely to check whether quattro still does quattro things. It does. And while you can’t simply disown the front driveshafts like you can in an E63, the ability to send up to 85 per cent of the shove rearwards means there’s still plenty of scope for misbehaviour.
Further south, we keep stuffing ourselves at the all-you-can-eat buffet of scenery and unsettling fascination: Vantablack lava fields, Death Valley, the chilling watchtower at Manzanar (the concentration camp where more than 10,000 people of Japanese ancestry were corralled during World War II), Ridgecrest (the earthquake capital of the world), and then - thud - straight into Antelope Valley and the hazy, traffic-choked sprawl spilling out of Los Angeles. We hang a right and head up and over the canyons towards Malibu.
Last year, the Woolsey Fire tore through this entire area. The blaze ate up 96,949 acres (about 39,200 hectares), forced more than 295,000 people to evacuate, and the wounds still look raw. Those incredible, twisting canyon roads are lined with blackened trees and scorched earth, and the replacement blacktop went down only a few days ago. In the 33°C heat, it sweats grease like a teenager’s face - which is exactly the kind of workout the RS6 lives for.
I jab the new BMW-like steering-wheel “RS” button twice to select “RS2” (for heritage’s sake), putting the RS6 into full attack with slackened suspension and a more permissive ESC, and then charge for the ocean.
And yes, it really moves. Speed piles on at a ridiculous rate, helped by huge torque and an eight-speed gearbox that’s always in the right place. Yet unlike an AMG, the engine doesn’t dominate the experience. It isn’t shouty or furious; instead it works ruthlessly effectively alongside the all-wheel steering, the optional sport differential and a seriously smart 4WD system to deliver instant agility and grip.
You need that here: traction varies, there are no guard rails, and plenty of off-camber corners are waiting to turn enthusiasm into a Hollywood crash sequence. What the RS6 does brilliantly is gather speed, then sand down the terrifying edges so it feels manageable. That said, if you’re not keen on velocity, tick the monstrous optional carbon brakes. They’re not the easiest to modulate around town, but when you stamp on them at pace they’re strong enough to concertina California’s fresh tarmac into a bitumen Viennetta.
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We spill onto the Pacific Coast Highway as the last thin fingers of a bright November sun start to fade, then head to Point Dume. Waiting for us is a huge, slobbering woofer and its slightly baffled owner.
“What’s your dog’s name,” I ask.
“At Hashtag Malibu Marzie.”
Malibu, then - where everyone is permanently campaigning for publicity, including elderly dogs. Still, she’s ideal for the classic fast-estate-with-a-dog cliché. Only instead of nailing the throttle and smearing her against the rear glass, we just confirm she’ll fit (she will, incidentally), then grab a surfboard for a bit of oceanside reflection. Apparently that’s what Californians do.
What the RS6 has proved over the course of today is that it genuinely covers every base: it’s quick, usable, comfortable, attention-seeking in the right way, and properly desirable. The most intriguing part is that no single component shouts the loudest. It could be mistaken for a lack of character - but really it’s simply Audi engineering a set of excellent parts to operate as one.
And, as any LA boardroom dweller will tell you: teamwork makes the dream work. Or… makes Top Gear’s Family Car of the Year. Surf’s up, dudes.
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