Overrated: Audi RS2

As silly stories involving fast cars go, my one about the Audi RS2 is fairly mild in the overall scheme, but I’ll recount it anyway. It amuses some more than others, depending on your take on such things.

The RS2 in question was the one featured in Autocar’s now-famous 1990s road test in which it was claimed the car was ‘Faster than a McLaren F1… from zero to 30mph.’ As was form in those days, we had the RS2 for a week during which time we tested it to near-destruction then sent it back to Audi and published the words a couple of weeks later.

These words and numbers duly went into history and, against the stopwatch at least, the RS2’s reputation was set in stone. What didn’t get written at the time was what happened to the car after it had been assessed but before it went back to Audi, in between which there was an entire weekend: a weekend that, for me, involved a nightclub in Ladbroke Grove, two policemen, my then girlfriend and her unfeasibly good-looking friend from Newcastle University, a large pile of broken glass… and said Audi RS2.