Large but handsome, the Audi Q8 is an enormously well resolved, coherent and comfortable car, worthy of any Palladian driveway.
IN 2008, BMW spliced rakish coupé bodywork onto a pumped up 4x4 chassis and invented the sport activity vehicle (SAV). Geddit? As opposed to sport utility vehicle (SUV). Motoring journalists whistled and looked the other way: in the midst of the credit crunch, who was going to pay extra for a cramped X5?
Ten years on, Munich’s genetically engineered love child of a tractor and the Batmobile has spawned half a million offspring and look who’s laughing! Bayerische Motoren Werke, that’s who.
That the X6 sold like hot cakes is testament most of all to man’s enduring desire to have his hot cake and eat it. Midlife man, that is. Midlife man wants to drive a sports car, but is too weighed down with the practicalities of life to do without his load-lugging estate: a dilemma with no real answer, short of a Lotus Exige and an old Volvo side by side in the same garage.
Perhaps then, the SAV is here to stay. Mercedes joined the fray a few years ago with the GLE Coupé, as rakishly cut as the X6.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 07, 2018-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 07, 2018-Ausgabe von Country Life UK.
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Give it some stick
Galloping through the imagination, competitive hobby-horsing is a gymnastic sport on the rise in Britain, discovers Sybilla Hart
Paper escapes
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For love, not money
This year may have marked the end of brag-art’, bought merely to show off one’s wealth. It’s time for a return to looking for connoisseurship, beauty and taste
Mary I: more bruised than bloody
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A love supreme
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Private views
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Shhhhhh...
THERE is great delight to be had poring over the front pages of COUNTRY LIFE each week, dreaming of what life would be like in a Scottish castle (so reasonably priced, but do bear in mind the midges) or a townhouse in London’s Eaton Square (worth a king’s ransom, but, oh dear, the traffic) or perhaps that cottage in the Cotswolds (if you don’t mind standing next to Hollywood A-listers in the queue at Daylesford). The estate agent’s particulars will give you details of acreage, proximity to schools and railway stations, but never—no, never—an indication of noise levels.
Mission impossible
Rubble and ruin were all that remained of the early-19th-century Villa Frere and its gardens, planted by the English diplomat John Hookham Frere, until a group of dedicated volunteers came to its rescue. Josephine Tyndale-Biscoe tells the story
When a perfect storm hits
Weather, wars, elections and financial uncertainty all conspired against high-end house sales this year, but there were still some spectacular deals
Give the dog a bone
Man's best friend still needs to eat like its Lupus forebears, believes Jonathan Self, when it's not guarding food, greeting us or destroying our upholstery, of course
