The Numbers Game

Despite being shorter than the Q7, Ingolstadt’s latest SUV has a name with a higher denomination, and is its new flagship. We head to Chile to check it out.

- Damien Reid

There’s no other way to say this but when I first jumped behind the wheel of the Audi Q8 55 TFSI with its 340bhp, three-litre, twin-turbo V6 offering up 500Nm of torque, I was somewhat disappointed.

Not with the Q8 itself, which encompasses some brilliant new design themes along with all the connectivity trickery carried over from the A8, it was with the right pedal. This engine is not unfamiliar to us having been tested under the hoods of the A8, the A7 Sportback, the A6 and A5 but somehow the extra bulk of an SUV shape didn’t justify its relatively sluggish performance. As is usual for drive programs, we travel two up and in this case, I opted to let my colleague take the opening stint while I perused the car’s incredibly slick interior without paying too much attention to where we were going. The Atacama desert on the edge of the Andes in Chile is a hostile place to launch a luxury car and it was only as we stopped for a quick pic opportunity that I noticed snow on the side of the road and the unbelievably picturesque mountain range we were traversing. I also didn’t realise that my colleague was extracting the most from the engine by keeping it in Sport mode and changing gears with the paddles to maintain momentum, yet it didn’t seem that steep.