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Audi RS6 Avants Are Already Getting Flipped, But Maybe You Should Avoid Those Cars Anyway – Jalopnik

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Illustration for article titled Audi RS6 Avants Are Already Getting Flipped, But Maybe You Should Avoid Those Cars Anyway

Photo: Audi

The Audi RS6 Avant is the longroof of dreams, and being a hot new car in high demand opportunists are already circling to make a quick buck. Dig into the sales history of some of the low-mile examples now available, though, and you’ll learn something surprising: It’s not just lone-wolf predators playing the market. Canadian dealers are in on the flipping game, too.

No wonder the flippers are on the case. The RS6 Avant, an autobahn stormer and occasional track toy, packs a 591-horsepower V8, quattro all-wheel drive and Audi tech into a package that raises your heart rate just looking at it.

As Road & Track found out, Canadian dealerships were among the first to get stock of the RS6 wagon. Some of these dealers decided to flip them in auctions. Those wagons, now technically used cars, were sent across the border to U.S. dealers. The practice seems pretty clever — the Canadian dealers made their profit without any haggling from a customer.

Check Cars.com for used RS6 Avants and you’ll see plenty advertised for more than sticker. Some of these cars have so few miles that you’d think their owners drove them home and immediately put them up for sale. But CarFax checks will reveal that many of these cars were first registered in Canada before ending up at a dealer in the States. Take this beautiful example for sale in Wisconsin:

Illustration for article titled Audi RS6 Avants Are Already Getting Flipped, But Maybe You Should Avoid Those Cars Anyway

Photo: Kearns Motor Car

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Its CarFax indicates two previous owners in Ontario despite having only 154 miles on its odometer.

Note that buying a recent vehicle that originated from Canada may bring some headaches. Even though these are the same cars that you can buy here, they sometimes have VINs that won’t come up in a DMV system. Some dealerships won’t even touch cars that come from Canada, Car and Driver reports.

While Canadian dealerships’ flipping RS6 Avants probably made sense at launch, it doesn’t now. Tick the New box at Cars.com and you’ll find more new cars at around sticker than these used ones. So there’s really no reason to buy a low-mile, but still technically used, RS6 Avant that’s had two or three previous owners.