AudiLover

SPY PHOTOS: New Audi RS6
Powered by V10 turbo

Audi is completing the A6 range with the RS6 as an direct competitor to BMW’s M5. Don’t get fooled by the S6 stickers on this Audi. This is the brand new and still secret RS6. The bigger air intakes in the front bumper and the two big oval exhaust pipes are the key clues. While the S models have four round exhaust pipes, the RS models have two oval pipes as their distinguishing feature.

Shown in these spy photos is the Avant (station wagon), but it will also be available as a saloon. Powered by the same V10 engine as the S6, but with some help from a turbo delivering about 550 bhp, this Audi will give the M5 and E63 AMG a strong challenge. The RS6 will debut in Geneva in March 2007.

Source: WCF

Scooby-Doo

Maybe Audi can send you some pictures of this to go with the S8 pictures they have sent you to put in your sticker album

ScoobyDoo555

oh my god - what a butt-ugly car

Dan

leonpoole

Those bonnet vents look ****, i hope they will be taken off when it's officially released. They look like there off and old Escort RS Turbo only upside down and back to front.

jjones

ditto the vents, front looks like a seat and the back like a jelly mold.

AudiLover

once the finished version is out it wont have those gay bonnet vents, and hopefully the front bumper will be faded into the rest of the car nicely once it gets the beefed up wheel arches and alloys

davyboy

jonc

..and here it is, the new RS6 adapted for the American market.

Audi RS6 - American Market

Stainy

MarkCSC

Why the hell do they need twin turbos to get 550BHP? The Lamborghini Gallardo gets around the same without any turbos from the same engine.

Tidgy

yuck, the old onelook low and mean, that just looks like an estate car

Edcase

Well, I for one won't be upgrading

Jay m A

iTrader: (2)

They don't. But try getting that Gallardo to 600HP, then ask the aftermarket tuners to get the RS6 to 650+HP

Andy M3

Seems strange that they will be turbo'd given the S4 and RS4 are n/a, and as has been said 550hp is easily achievable n/a!

Blueblaster

An utterly irrelevant vehicle. It'll weigh the thick end of 2 tonnes and totally insulate you from any sensation of speed. Buy the same car with a less stupid engine and get yourself a nice supercharged Exige instead.

billythekid

Just to add, Michael Schumacher drives an RS6... I am sure for some of you thats a reason not to buy one

AudiLover

schumacher also has a new RS4. What are you guys who paint all audis with the 90's audis sterotype brush gonna say now

Rumours point to between 550-600hp. As for BMW's a poverty spec A6 has a nicer interior than the M5. BMW interiors are quite **** for the money actually. No wonder 75% of luxury vehicle buyers dont even consider a BMW.

Scooby-Doo

Blimey Audi,

No after school activities today then ?

ScoobyDoo555

Andy M3

Interesting statement.

TimmyboyWRX

looks ok,ish, i like the new rs4, but this does seem a bit of a pointless car, even Edcase with his old rs6 said it dont feel fast, and surely ( this makes me seem old lol) in todays speedcamera obsessed world its best to have a light car that feels quick than a luxury one that dont lol...

Rich people only need apply, id have an audi or a beemer if i wanted a luxury car, but not one that can run 500bhp, no point, and crap on the track where u could use it as its too heavy surely to handle well?

N1gel 1970

it does look like a bit of a hearse, just hope it goes slightly better though

AudiLover

Link: BMW Targets New Drivers

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BMW Targets New Drivers
A new ad campaign from the carmaker de-emphasizes the brand's performance to attract a wider, affluent audience

It's hard to believe, but after all these years there are still a great many consumers, specifically luxury-car buyers, who associate BMW with the yuppie phenomenon of the 1980s. That's what BMW Vice-President of Marketing Jack Pitney was distressed to find when he took over the brand last year after a successful run managing MINI USA. BMW's research shows that despite record sales in the U.S. last year, a shocking 75% of luxury buyers aren't even considering a Bimmer.

The problem, say BMW brass, is that for too long it has perhaps overemphasized the brand as the paragon of performance driving. BMW, indelibly etched in performance-car enthusiasts' psyches as "The Ultimate Driving Machine" in ads for 33 years, is showing a different plume of feathers in a new ad campaign, the first from its new U.S. ad agency GSD&M of Austin, Tex. Rather than horsepower and curve-hugging handling, it's ballyhooing its design prowess and financial independence.

In one ad, for example, it asserts that BMW's designers and engineers answer only to BMW, while cheekily reminding readers that Volvo and Jaguar are owned by Ford (F), that Audi is but a unit of Volkswagen (the People's Car), and that its nemesis, Mercedes-Benz, is all merged up with -- gasp! -- Chrysler.

COOL BUT INHUMAN? In another ad, it brazenly spotlights the rear end of its 7 Series flagship sedan, the very design element that was lampooned by journalists in 2001 when the car debuted. But since then, Toyota (TM) and even Mercedes have copied the so-called bustle-like "Bangle Butt," named for BMW chief designer Chris Bangle. The headline: "Not taking risks is risky." With pitches like these, the Bavarian carmaker hopes to curry favor with the "creative class" in America that, the theory goes, values independent thinking and design and the kind of risk taking that watered-down, conglomerated companies can't afford.

Pitney says the brand's problem, if it has one, isn't showing up in sales yet, but that the challenge is obvious. "We're entering new product segments all the time, and we can't afford to not be on the shopping lists of this many people," he says. About the new direction of the campaign, Pitney says the company isn't initiating a makeover. But there are dimensions of BMW's brand story that clearly need to be communicated better, he says. "People think we have a cool persona as a brand, but say we lack humanity," says Pitney. Call the campaign preventive maintenance, then, because BMW's 266,000 in sales last year was an all-time record.

The targeting of the creative class is an idea inspired by Richard Florida, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who has written three books on this "class" of people, who include scientists, engineers, architects, educators, writers, artists, and entertainers. Their economic function is to create new ideas, new technology, and new creative content. Members of this group, which is about 38 million strong, share common characteristics, such as being driven in work and family by creativity, individuality, diversity, and merit.

THE NEED TO BE LIKED. "More than anything, they live by the power of ideas, and admire companies and people who champion creativity and ideas," says GSD&M president Roy Spence. Ironically, according to a ranking of U.S. cities by Florida, who consulted on the new BMW campaign, Austin is the No. 1 market for the creative class.

The tone in some of the ads reminds me of the dynamic played out in the hit British TV series The Office, in which the office manager is depicted comically as a man obsessed with being loved and not rocking the corporate boat. Corporations, say image and marketing consultants, are driven more these days than in past years by the desire to be liked by customers as well as employees.

"There's an influential class of consumers, maybe it's the creative class, who make buying decisions based in part on how they feel toward a company and what it stands for," says Dennis Keene, an independent consultant who advises companies on marketing strategy. BMW, says Keene, has come a long way since the 1980s, "and has good stories to tell that could legitimately change some perceptions."

IDEAS ON A PEDESTAL. Unusual for BMW, several print and TV ads show and discuss BMW's Leipzig, Germany, plant, which was designed by world-renowned architect Zaha Hadid. The factory is a design statement that includes a workspace for white-collar employees, whose desks sit below an almost silent assembly line carrying BMW bodies to another assembly line for completion. "A parent company would never let us build this," reads the ad.

Some TV spots depict stereotypical corporate-cog executives who squelch creativity and initiative. "Beware of the compromisers. They say things like, 'Choose your battles,' or 'Is this idea really worth falling on your sword for?' " Later, the recurring message throughout the campaign comes in, "At BMW, ideas are everything."

In another TV spot, a wrecking ball slams into Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water" house, and a Jackson Pollock painting sits in the dumpster, contrasting BMW to companies that don't value maverick artists and designers.

It's easy to take a strategy like this and execute it badly. I point you to the current stilted Ford Motor ad campaign that dryly and without any wit trumpets Ford as a company driven by innovation. Running a bunch of TV and print ads telling people that you're innovative just doesn't sound very, well, innovative.

GREEN MACHINE. What I like about this BMW campaign is that the messaging is, in fact, creative and well designed. BMW has long been a company of innovators and creative designers. But it's a side of the business that has never been touted in its communication in any meaningful way. The Internet media buy for the new effort includes automotive-enthusiast and news Web sites BMW has frequented before, but the new BMW ads are also hitting sites like Home | The Onion - America's Finest News Source, Gawker, Manhattan Media News and Gossip, Josh Spear, Gothamist, www.weblogs.com, and Flavorpill -- sites where the company feels it can reach the creative-class cognoscenti.

I also like a couple of ads that speak to BMW's environmental practices, which in today's business culture is closely aligned with innovation and creativity. The headline in one ad reads, "According to our engineers, tailpipe water can be quite delicious." This ad points to the 745h, a version of BMW's flagship 7-Series sedan that runs on liquid hydrogen and puts out zero emissions, just water from the tailpipe. The car, the ad, says, is ready to be produced right now. "We're just waiting on the world to catch up," in terms of having stations that supply liquid hydrogen. Another ad spotlights the fact that more than 50% of the energy used at its South Carolina plant is derived from methane piped from a landfill nine miles away.

This campaign will run through the summer, and will preface launches of the BMW 3-Series coupe and the redesign of the X5 SUV. The carmaker is entering new segments, too. In another two years or so, the 1 Series now on sale in Europe is expected to be in the U.S., and the company has acknowledged it's working on a vehicle that's neither SUV nor minivan but encompasses attributes of both with very flexible storage and seating options. As the company stretches what the BMW brand stands for, it's right to try and bring more of its natural target audience under the tent.

GETTING OUT THE VOTE. GSD&M is one of the better ad agencies in the country. It has done work for Land Rover, but is better known for ads created for Southwest Airlines (LUV), Wal-Mart (WMT), Krispy Kreme (KKD), and the AARP. Agency founder and President Spence has also advised Bill Clinton, and now Hillary Clinton, on political marketing strategy.

In the end, consumers decide which brands they bring into their lives, especially big-ticket items like luxury cars, in similar fashion to the way they vote. Perhaps we should call this campaign "The Kinder, Gentler BMW."

davyboy

65.7% of statistics are made up on the spot.

...or copy and paste from web links

Trout

iTrader: (1)

75% of luxury car buyers in the US do not consider a BMW...

...99.98% of luxury car buyers anywhere in the world do not consider an Audi

I mean - how many A8s do you see compared to Beemers and Mercs?!

The last year of full data states that for every 5 BMW 7 series sold there were only 2 Audi A8s.

Tragic

cat7

whats is this blind love 4 a mark

whether its bmw, audi, merc etc

if a cars good its good regardless of badge. Its true some marques so some things very well

audi....interiors
porkers...handling
bmw.....overall balance etc etc

anyway back to the rs6.....lets hope they made the same progress as they did with the rs4, should be a great tustle....m5 touring vs rs6

AudiLover

lol audi A6 outsells the 5er in germany

TT outsells Z4

A3 outsells 1er

The 7ers big market is the US where audi do poorly. Around the rest of the globe audi is growing a hell of alot faster in emergin economies than BMW.

The S8 interior is better than the that of the same priced new MERC S500. BMW cant hold a candle to the two interior wise

If it wasnt for the 3er BMW wouldnt be on top of the 3 right now. But even VWs have better interiors than beemers and some beemers interiors at about the same level as the brand new corsa

Nevetas

I bought a new RS4 last Wednesday, although I havn't even clocked up 500 miles yet, so far it's proving to be the favorite of all my cars.

Not the fatest, not the greatest looking, not the best on track. But it does everything well, rather than just one thing very well.

Might be the first car I ever keep!

NeVeTaS-(DoT)-CoM

ScoobyDoo555

pah!! you said that about the GT3

Dan