In short succession, we’ve had a one-of-660 Audi RS6 Avant GT delivered to Autocar HQ, Toyota has announced a run of laudably hardcore GR Supras and Alpina has been in touch to ask if we would like a go in the dreamy, last-of-the-line B3 GT.
We appear to be living in the midst of a special-edition bonanza (no prizes for guessing why), and it’s an excellent thing.
One day, most of these cars will have shed their ridiculous price tags and be spectacular used buys. The ‘special edition’ is a familiar ploy for shifting old metal, but do it well and icons can be born.
It will be particularly interesting to chart the RS6 GT’s value trajectory. We’re talking about a £180k estate here – one with manually adjustable dampers, which is of course what every family wagon needs. Madness.
It also appears to have the most kerbable alloy wheels (white, too!) since Jay-Z’s Maybach Exelero. And I can’t have been the only one who thought that Audi had made a bit of a Horlicks of the design with the eyeball-searing IMSA GTO-inspired graphics.
Yet when you see the thing in the metal, it works, having the aura not of a messily jazzed-up mega-estate but of a practical supercar. Special? Yeah, and then some. Genuinely good to drive, too.
As to where the bottom of the depreciation curve will lurk, the regular RS6 has stubbornly held its value and you will struggle to find even four-year-old examples for less than £70k.
The RS6 GT’s three-year, 36k-mile value is something that the experts at Cap HPI don’t even attempt to predict, and who can blame them? As with the BMW M5 CS, it will take a while for prices to come to earth, but they will.
The desirability of a special edition is generally proportional to the level of effort that went into creating it. The reason nobody can now afford a half-decent Tommi Mäkinen Lancer Evolution VI is because Mitsubishi didn’t just do a snazzy sticker job and send the car on its way.
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