Billfold Wallet - 2006 Audi A6 Wagon

The C6 A6 launched in 2004 and the wagon — sold as Avant in Europe and as Wagon in North America — followed a year later. By 2006 the platform had settled in as Audi's mid-size flagship wagon, with the new "single-frame" grille at the front and the long, deeply scalloped greenhouse that designer Walter de'Silva had drawn under his earlier tenure at Alfa Romeo. The 3.2-litre FSI V6 with quattro produced 255 horsepower — fast enough for a wagon, smooth enough for the highway, refined enough to reframe what an A6 was supposed to be.

The C6 Avant was the car the late-2000s German upper-middle-class household actually bought — the alternative to the Mercedes E-Class wagon, the choice of the Munich law firm partner with two children and a Labrador. In North America the Wagon sold to the design and architecture cohort that had previously bought a Volvo V70. Audi's racing programme had by then dominated Le Mans for nearly a decade, and the showroom benefited from the residual halo. The S6 variant — with a 5.2-litre V10 derived from the Lamborghini Gallardo — became one of the more discreet performance saloons of the era.

Audi built around 460,000 C6 A6s across the model's run from 2004 to 2011. The Neckarsulm-fitted leather and aluminium interiors, with the second-generation MMI system, remain the cabin reference point of Audi's most confident design decade.