Audi RS e-tron GT

My first experience of the ever burgeoning relationship between Ingolstadt and Stuttgart was the Porsche tweaked Audi RS2 which I had the joy of flinging down the standing quarter mile strip laid out on Madeira Drive at the 1994 Brighton Speed trials.

And I’m not sure which gave me greater pleasure: ripping off Ford GT40s – because, although the glorious Le Mans cars crossed the finish line at about 140 mph to the RS2’s scant 100, the former wasted a snarling eternity scrabbling for grip at the off, whilst the latter simply pinged off the line like a marble fired from a catapult; or, the helpful man I found rummaging amongst the spokes of the RS2’s offside front wheel – no one had seen the likes before, and he thought the Porsche red-painted brake callipers were an empty crisp packet…

Audi has since reciprocated by building Porsches – the 924 and 944, but with both marques now members of the VW group, this is the first time that Audi has taken the skeleton and vital organs of a Porsche, the Taycan, and produced its own take on same.

Though both are four-door machines, the Porsche is styled very much as a sports car, Audi a GT. The marque’s gaping grille I have disliked for so long is still here in spirit, but now so visually residual as to be almost painless, and all the better for it.

A whiff of the original quattro still puts in an appearance in the form of gently angular blisters over each wheel arch, but it’s viewed from the rear three-quarter that the Audi looks its best; with swanky rear running lights sweeping the full width of that fastback rump, the RS e-tron GT is callipygous indeed.

On board, superb build and material quality showcases the best interior the company has produced for a while. Whilst the A8’s dedication to the touch-screen is sufficiently all-pervasive to prove, frankly, irritating on occasion, the e-tron compromises with a more thoughtful combination of screen stabbing and proper switchgear for the faff-free control of stuff like the air-conditioning. Tick.

Abetted by a perfectly sized, alcantara-clad helm, the driving position’s excellent (though rear visibility leaves a little to be desired), there’s stacks of space in the rear seats, and the giant GT makes up for a slight shortfall in the boot department with the bonus of an 81 litre frunk…

All of which promotes gentle head scratching as to where Audi has manged to house two electric motors -238 bhp with single gear transmission on the front axle and 456 bhp with an acceleration-enhancing twin-speed gearbox astern- and enough lithium-ion componentry to offer a battery capacity of 93 kWh.

The upshot is an all-wheel drive powertrain developing 589 bhp. Lob into the equation the twinned electric motors’ ability to generate 612 lb ft of torque from a standstill, and a quoted a 0-62 mph time of just 3.6 seconds is hardly surprising.

Slightly less intelligible is why Audi has seen fit bolster the e-tron’s sprint time with the addition of an overboost function which, when you floor the thing in Dynamic or Launch mode, ups the ante to 636 bhp for, um, 2.5 whole seconds, flinging you to 62 mph in one third of a second less.

Many’s the time I have wished that lorries overtaking each other on the A34 were equipped with 30 button-accessed seconds of additional oomph to help them grind by in something less than three or four minutes. But it never occurred to me I might need said extra sneeze of assistance in what is already a devastatingly rapid Gran Turismo…

Despite the e-tron tipping the scales at a disconcerting 2347 kg, Audi has made the most of a centre of gravity lower than that of the R8 (Yup!) to deliver pretty impressive handling. There’s not much feel to the steering, but it is precise, and damping and body control are first class to boot.

Try hustling the RS along your favourite grippy B road and that weight is an ever-present force to be reckoned with. But on a more open A road with fast, sweeping corners the Audi demonstrates sublime GT credentials, and its capacity to cross country in imperious style at outlandish pace is gently intoxicating.

Indeed, though you can dial in artificial noises off that sound something like a hyperdrive spaceship with a heavy cold, the only serious disappointment to the driving experience is the absence of multiple cylinders in a V formation bellowing their accompaniment to your progress.

And it’s ironic that, given Audi’s propensity to err on the side of tough love when it comes to ride quality, the most comfortable car in their fleet should turn out to be a 2.3 tonne monster on mahoosive 21” wheels…

So where, I hear you cry, did that half a star disappear to? Well, though a whisker short of £135,000 is something of stretch in the wallet stakes, it’s not the money. It’s the range. Audi quotes 283 miles, but something around 200 seems closer to the mark for anyone eking the best out what the RS has to offer.

And that, for a car with such effortlessly engaging, continent-crushing abilities, feels about 50% shy of what’s actually required.