You really have to restrain yourself in this beast, the power is just so addictive - a quick thump of the throttle at any speed and you're up into licence-losing territory before you know it. I'd been stopped for abusing speed limits in France in the past (there's a hefty on-the-spot fine) so with 444bhp at our disposal we had to be careful, most of the time anyway.

It snowed non-stop after we arrived; a few of days of hardcore snowboarding and the RS6 had almost disappeared. With conditions in the resort getting worse by the hour, we decided to dig the car out and head for home. Not so simple. We pulled the RS6 out of the snow and onto the slushy road, but where was that amazing Quattro traction? The car just slid across the road on its super-wide low-profile tyres. We'd have to find some snow chains for the Audi's massive 19in wheels. Unfortunately they don't make chains for 19in wheels, so we had to hire a recovery truck to take us down the mountain (΂£135, merci).

On the trip down, the recovery driver told us (in his best franglais) about an identical RS6 that had crashed into another car earlier that week because it didn't have snow chains fitted. I was glad to be on that truck.