Right now, precisely what makes an Audi RS model special is that there are so few of them. Performance upgrades aside, it’s a special thing for me to see one when I’m out in the world. Audi, apparently, has taken notice of this, and will introduce a lot more RS models just to make my day. How generous!
The German automaker plans to launch eight—eight!—more RS models by early 2018, reports Autocar, citing Audi’s Quattro head honcho and ex-Lamborghini boss Stephan Winkelmann.
Currently, there are seven RS Audis, including the RS 3, Q3 RS, TT RS, RS 6 and RS 7. Winkelmann wouldn’t say which other cars Audi would RS in the coming months, nor did he say which of them would come stateside. Autocar thinks that an R8 RS could be a possibility.
This is starting to smell a lot like Mercedes-AMG, where AMGing a model is now applied to even the near beer AMGs rather than just the most hardcore models. There are now so many AMG models that it’s very hard to keep track of them all.
Yet, Winkelmann doesn’t think so. “We are not going to do what they do,” he said of AMG. “We have a lot of plans but are not revealing them yet. It is better to under-promise and over-deliver.”
Now, “what they do” is up for interpretation. Does he mean that Audi will eventually buy out Quattro GmbH and start slapping RS badges on cars that wouldn’t ordinarily be considered RSes? That started happening big time after Mercedes-Benz took over AMG and the whole thing became Mercedes-AMG.
As for under-promising and over-delivering? I can only wait to find out.