Audi S8 (D5) | Cars to be thankful for
Big, expensive, heavy, old - welcome to the best new Audi you can still buy
The arrival of the Audi S8 could hardly have been better timed; I was halfway through Amazon’s four-part documentary on NASCAR legend, Dale Earnhardt. For the uninitiated, Earnhardt, with a streak of belligerence and self-righteousness almost as wide as Ayrton Senna’s, left an indelible mark on stock car racing in the ‘80s and ‘90s, amassing 76 Winston Cup victories and seven championships, before his untimely (and hugely prominent) death at the Daytona 500 in 2001. Being a good old boy from North Carolina, he would probably not have liked the S8 on spec, it being as German as a loaf of Pumpernickel baked in the shape of a Messerschmitt. But it’s hard to think of another three-box saloon currently on sale in the UK today that would better suit the self-styled Man in Black.
On one hand, unsurprisingly, this is about hard-charging, eight-cylinder grunt. Elsewhere in Audi’s lineup, you will hardly need me to tell you, the twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 is becoming conspicuous for its increasing absence. But it survives in the S8, unsullied but for the presence of a modest 48-volt starter motor, and otherwise in possession of a decidedly immodest 570hp, not to mention 590lb ft of torque from 2,050rpm - the same amount that was available to the now-defunct RS6. Allied to all-wheel drive and a predictably obliging eight-speed torque converter, the engine will have 2.2-tonnes of 5.2-metre-long limousine just beyond the national limit in 3.8 seconds, should you choose to wholly disregard the possibility of achieving 24.5mpg.
On the other hand, there is the Intimidator factor. Earnhardt became famous (and infamous) not just for being tremendously quick and brave - though he was - but also for being hyper-aggressive in that ‘rubbing’s racing’ way that tends to result in a lot of contact. So when car No.3 loomed large in your rearview mirror, you knew what was coming. Now, perhaps this wouldn’t have seemed quite so pertinent had the S8 turned up in cloudburst grey - but in Mythos Black, on 10-spoke, 21-inch black wheels and with blacked-out badges, the message to other road users is hardly subliminal. People on the M4, wearily accustomed to Ingolstadt DRLs bearing down on them in the outside lane, could hardly get out of the way quickly enough.
Of course, most full-sized, performance-badged German luxury saloons have something of the cutthroat about them - it reflects the instincts of the paying customer, and their enthusiasm for derestricted stretches of autobahn. The original S8, the V8-powered D2, launched in 1996, was very much intended to gatecrash the BMW and Mercedes hegemony; 18 months later, it was parachuted into John Frankenheimer's Ronin, to memorable effect. The following decade, Audi parachuted its 450hp 5.2-litres V10 into the D3 - as worthy a tribute to the displacement-crazed noughties as you will find anywhere (not least because it was only the second largest petrol engine installed in that generation of A8).
A semblance of sanity returned with the D4, the S8 receiving the 4.0-litre TFSI unit in 2012 - although its maker still saw fit to commission a ‘plus’ version in 2016, produced by Audi Sport (about as close to an RS variant as the flagship was ever likely to get) and pumped-up to 605hp. Aside from an ever-tightening regulatory noose, there is presumably nothing to prevent Audi from repeating the trick in the D5 - although were that to happen, you would almost certainly be looking at a run-out model. This generation of A8, first shown in 2017, is already on borrowed time. Its replacement, based on the new PPE platform and apparently looking a lot like the Grandsphere concept Audi presented in 2021, has been waiting in the wings for some time.
At any rate, whatever form its successor takes it will not be a three-box saloon with a V8. That makes the S8 a car to be thankful for almost by default - much as it does everything with an eight-cylinder engine - yet it doesn’t tell the full story of an Audi super-limo finally coming good. That story comes in three parts. Firstly, you probably need to get on board with the styling, inside and out. This means embracing the idea that the S8, possibly more so in this generation than any other, looks very much like an A4 with an overactive pituitary gland. Knock the badges off it, avoid the flashier wheels, and only the glint of the quad tailpipe would prevent it from seeming nothing more than an amorphous big Audi, no more memorable than a steel-framed, glass-fronted office block.
This is a good thing. This is the full Ronin: Q-car anonymity right up to the point it bladders past you, detonating petrol. The interior, even with the added sweetener of Cognac-coloured seats, is equally forgettable. And no less good at its job. That famed Audi fit and finish, a forerunner to Apple’s aesthetic playbook, merging function, form and glossy tactility, is manifested everywhere. When the S8 was new, the granite-faced absence of design flourish seemed like a handicap; now, the comparative datedness of its screens and layout works in its favour. You don’t feel like you’re sitting in the world’s smallest cinema, nor about to have a picnic in a millennial’s idea of a Johnny Cab. You feel like you’re there for one reason: to drive a car, in supremely refined and business-like surroundings. It is charmingly novel.
Secondly, there is the rolling comfort, not previously considered a strength of the S8, thanks to the technical limitations of its sporty remit. This has been conquered (smothered might be a more apt description) by the inclusion of Audi’s Predictive Active Suspension, the air-sprung, camera-governed system that aims to keep occupants isolated in something like equilibrium jelly by anticipating and responding to the road ahead. The technology is neither new nor restricted to the S8 (it features in the latest Taycan and e-tron GT), yet its knack for making bewildering bump absorption seem consistent - even nonchalant - is somehow much easier to appreciate when the silicon-age chassis is powered by a resolutely old-fashioned V8.
Probably this has something to do with expectations. You get in expecting bigness and plushness and dynamic precision, and that is what arrives. In the EVs, you try to sense the moments where the system is leaning you into fast corners or maximising its wheel travel to swallow a speed bump; in the S8, you tend to let it wash over you, unthinkingly. Even the four-wheel steering and the active rear diff - both crucial to making such a big car feel endlessly manageable at speed - seem only distantly related to the unfailing stability and corner-taking fluency of the whole. True, it will not have you on tenterhooks, nor immersed in the quality of feedback - but you're not supposed to be: you're meant to be very relaxed, very assured and probably going about 40 per cent faster than a magistrate would prefer.
Thirdly, whether you are or not, you will definitely be wallowing in the pleasure-wake of the V8. As we've noted, the S8 has always featured charismatic engines, yet it is the continuing presence of the 4.0-litre unit - in a segment transitioning to plug-in hybrids - that ensures the D5 hallowed status. How wonderful to report that this is clearly by design: the car starts up with an augmented growl, and very rarely does it release a hold on your imagination. Most fast Audis aim for a ruthlessly energetic turn of speed from step-off, but the enormous in-gear performance is something else. It treads the line between cooly understated and appropriately mischievous very well, like a muscle car that’s been wrapped in throw rugs. Time and again, without wanting for a drive mode beyond ‘auto’, the powertrain persuades you to take giant, greedy liberties with it - not just because the accompanying gizmos work to contain and enable the ferocity (though they do), but because the pay-off is such a conspicuous, warbly treat for the senses.
All this in a car that, should you wish, is equally capable of playing limousine to adult-sized children or mooching anonymously and sumptuously up a high street. There are limits, eventually, to this multi-faceted talent - this isn’t the saloon you’d necessarily choose to extract every meaningful ounce of enjoyment from a B road, and its secondary ride isn’t always flawless on 21s - but if you forgive it those minor shortcomings, the S8 covers a bewildering number of bases in handsome style. As it should, you might argue, for a saloon that starts at £118,285. But no version of the A8, nor any full-size luxury saloon, is built with affordability in mind; they are all about world-conquering supremacy, much as Earnhardt was in his pomp. No previous S8 wholly lived up to that reputation. This one does.
SPECIFICATION | AUDI S8 (D5)
Engine: 3,993cc, V8, twin-turbocharged, plus starter generator
Transmission: 8-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 571@6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 590@2,050-4,500rpm
0-62mph: 3.8sec
Top speed: 155mph (limited)
Weight: 2,220kg (unladen)
MPG: 24.5 (WLTP)
CO2: 260 (WLTP)
Price: £121,930 as tested
Got very excited seeing a W12 one stuck in traffic yesterday, and then had to explain why to my baffled companions.
Can t get on with the all black spec that Audi thinks is needed for the U.K., versus continent.
Did they have a surplus stock of Piano black inlays - that’s way too much in the interior.
I looked up the car on the Audi configurator and you can’t even spec a different material - you’re stuck with it.
Also, they have 3x black exterior colour options.
I know the idea of a Q car is to look anonymous, but there is anonymous and there is bland.
However many option boxes you tick in the lesser model, you'll never replicate the feel.
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