Audi S8 review

YOU MENTIONED A FACELIFT?

Yep, Audi refreshed the entire A8 range in late 2021 and decided to give the S8 a nip and tuck while it was at it. The quad exhausts remain and there’s now sportier bumpers front and rear as well as a unique chrome grille. However, as you can see from the images above, there’s also something called the ‘black exterior styling pack’ that dulls everything down for the full Parisian special op look.

WHAT ABOUT POWER AND PERFORMANCE?

The powertrain hasn’t changed with Audi’s facelift either, but that’s fine – the S8 develops 563bhp and 590lb ft of torque. That’s enough to see this 2.2-tonne car hit 62mph from rest in 3.8 seconds and reach a limited 155mph top speed. Not quite as fast as the old Mercedes-AMG S63, which had north of 600bhp, but then the S8 was a fair bit cheaper, despite starting at £100,000 or so.

The S8 used to be the flagship in Audi’s range. When it launched in 1996 this was the priciest, most powerful Audi on sale. Nowadays an RS7 or RSQ8 kicks its bum if it’s ‘Q-car’ you want, though you’d need to keep the SUV’s colour plain and pop a space-saver on each corner for it to be any way ‘subtle’. If it’s ‘priciest’, think R8, and ‘most powerful’ is an honour that now rests with the RS e-tron GT. Yep, an electric car. Still none of those can match the S8 for cool, can they?

Our choice from the range

Audi

S8 Quattro 4dr Tiptronic

Ј100,310

This is a very good car. It’s technologically impressive, feels very well made and perhaps isn’t actually that expensive given the amount of car you get for your money.

While it’s not overwhelmingly exciting or involving, it handles like a far smaller car and is unreasonably rapid point-to-point for what is fundamentally a luxury limo. It might not be quite the hooligan the S63 is, but it’s cheaper and comfort doesn’t suffer for having had its attitude turned up. Audi’s predictive air suspension setup is genuine witchcraft. It’s infinitely preferable to quite a lot of high-performance SUVs too. Best news though? You can have it in dark green.

Driving

What is it like to drive?

There’s much technology at play here, all geared towards overcoming the inherent limitations of a car as big and heavy as the S8. The first of the three main systems tasked with re-writing the laws of physics is Audi’s ‘predictive active suspension’, which draws power from the 48-volt electrical system and uses a forward-facing camera to scan the road ahead for speed bumps, potholes and so on.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS WITCHCRAFT…

The theory is the car knows there’s a bump coming, so it can prepare its air suspension to cope – actuators on each corner move 40cm-long titanium rods to stress or relieve individual wheels. The system can compensate for pitch (for example by jacking up the front under heavy braking to reduce dive) and roll (Audi says the max roll angle is just 2.5 degrees, which is nothing), and even tilt the car ever so slightly into bends.

Then you’ve got all-wheel steering. At low speeds the rear-axle works with the front, turning in the opposite direction to cut the more than five-metre-long S8’s turning circle by about a metre. At high speeds the rear axle turns in the same direction as the front for better stability. The final piece of the puzzle is what Audi calls the ‘sport differential’, which vectors torque across the rear axle.

AND THE RESULTS ARE…?

Mightily impressive actually. Pleasingly neutral, in fact. The four-wheel steering feels admirably natural. It really tips the S8 into tight corners, Quattro helps it hang on gamely and the V8 means it emerges out the other side at speeds once reserved only for serious performance cars.

Meanwhile the suspension is working overtime – keeping the S8 uncannily level however rudely you treat it. It doesn’t squat under acceleration, dive under braking or roll whatsoever in the bends. Pay attention and you’ll feel it leaning in. We wouldn’t exactly call it involving, but this is an enjoyable car to drive in its own way, and unreasonably rapid point-to-point.

Its greatest success though is that when you’re not flinging it about like precisely nobody who buys it will ever do, the S8 goes back to being a normal A8. The added schportiness doesn’t make it any less comfortable, cosseting or calming. You can’t say the same about the AMG S63. It doesn’t matter what mode you’re in – Comfort+, Dynamic or any of the others in between – at heart the S8 is still a big, world-class luxo-barge.

A LUXO-BARGE WITH VERY CLEVER SUSPENSION…

The cameras don’t always pick-up speed bumps – they can only see a few metres ahead, and don’t like it if you’re going more than 30mph or so – but when they do, you feel (and hear) the car raise up just before you reach them. Then you glide over the top as though the bump wasn’t there, before the car sits itself back down again.

WHAT ABOUT THE ENGINE? 

As for the powertrain, well the V8 is as lovely here as it is in the Bentley Continental GT or Bentayga.

In the S8 it’s incredibly smooth and all but silent, with a measured burble (and an endearing whine from the MHEV system) when you trouble the throttle. In auto, the eight-speed tiptronic gearbox is smooth and sensible, while in manual the upshifts are fine, but it could do with being a bit quicker on the way down. Not that anyone who buys an S8 will ever even attempt to use the wheel-mounted paddles. The mild hybrid stuff is well integrated – you won’t feel the motor stopping, starting or shutting off cylinders.

Interior

What is it like on the inside?

Oh, it’s nice in here. Audi does good interiors almost across the board, from the A1 through to the R8, but the A8 is its best. In the A4 or Q5 you can find cheap plastics if you look hard enough. Not in the A8, which is relentlessly solid and expensive-feeling. More so than an S-Class Mercedes, we reckon. That said, the S-Class’s interior is more immediately welcoming than the S8’s, which is very straight-edged and arguably a bit cold. Better spec some fancy coloured leather to liven proceedings up.

The interface is touch-based with much space on the centre console given over to twin landscape touchscreens, but it’s certainly not as dominant as something like Merc’s Hyperscreen. Here the top one (10.1 inches) does navigation, media and so on, while the bottom one (8.6 inches) looks after the climate controls, and serves as a keyboard or trackpad for entering destinations into the GPS.

DOES IT WORK?

While not as user-friendly as, y’know, a load of buttons, Audi’s setup is clearer, more coherent and more responsive than Jaguar Land Rover’s, which also does the twin-screen thing – it’s easier to navigate your way through and learn your way around. You can set it to respond to a tap and give no haptic/audible feedback, or require a firmer push (think force touch on an iPhone) and ‘click’. We like the latter, especially when you’re using it on the move.

A third screen acts as your instrumentation – Audi’s ‘Virtual Cockpit’ is still the best implementation of screen-based dials out there and is more customisable than most people will need.

Differences from the normal A8? Better seats up front, a thicker-rimmed steering wheel, carbon/piano black trim wherever you look, much Alcantara, stainless-steel pedals, a red-ringed engine start button and red seatbelts if you so wish. Ooooh. Space in the back continues to be ‘enormous’, though the three-seat rear bench is fixed with no reclining functions for those in the back. Shorthand for ‘this is a driver’s limo’, we guess. A £3,000 ‘rear comfort pack’ does add TV screens back there though.

Other markets get the option of a long-wheelbase S8, but in the UK we’re limited to the miniscule 5.19m long iteration. Think we’ll manage somehow, don’t you? The boot on our standard version will still swallow 505 litres of golfing equipment too.

Buying

What should I be paying?

Big, luxury cars like the S8 don’t hold their money all that well, meaning if you buy outright for a minimum of £102,730 (before options), when you come to sell a few years down the line you’ll probably find it’s worth disconcertingly less. Not that any owners will care. Nor will they mind much that it’s hardly the most efficient car on the road. Audi claims around 22mpg and 245g/km of CO2 emissions despite the mild-hybrid help. We suppose the clue is in the word ‘mild’.

The fancy suspension, all-wheel steering and diff are all standard on the S8, with most of your options then based on appearance. You can have a Black Edition (for £105,730 with a blacked-out grille and bumpers, black mirrors and inch-bigger 21in alloys) and a fully-loaded Vorsprung (£117,730 with Matrix LED headlights, massage seats, more leather and a big sunroof).

The coolest thing about the S8 is that it takes a keen eye to spot it’s something a bit special. A few bits of altered trim, big wheels and quad exhausts (which are all real) are the only differences between the S8 and the V6 petrol and diesels.

More of a leasing kinda person? It’ll be over £1,500 per month on a typical three-year deal. A three-year/60,000-mile warranty is standard, while servicing is every 19,000 miles or two years, whichever comes around first.

Keyword: Audi S8 review