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.
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