AUDI S8

Clever active suspension gives 563bhp V8 a unique selling point among limos

- MATT SAUNDERS

TESTED 23.5.22, SURREY ON SALE NOW

Imagining a customer for the Audi S8 is a slightly complex exercise, but the car apparently now accounts for 20% of UK A8 sales, so there must be plenty of them.

This car's sheer size, its particular comfort and luxury tuning, its reserved performance styling, and its unambiguous limousine classification all seem to mark it out as one not to drive but rather be driven in, which is a little at odds with its Audi Sport badging.

So is this the A8 for the CEO who travels in the back and just wants the car park status it confers? Or, as a more understated fast saloon, is it bought by someone who doesn't actually want people to notice it? Might its owner be driven in the week but drive themselves at the weekends, perhaps? Or are they just an A8 'patron' who wants a car with as much Audi-brand "Technik' as they can get?

The answer to every one of those questions could well be 'yes', funnily enough, because this is a car of quite a broad luxury appeal.

Having arrived as part of the A8 range back fourth-generation in 2020, the S8 (which comes in short-wheelbase form only) offers a similar blend of big-hitting twin-turbocharged V8 performance, top-level refinement, uncompromising luxury and understated performance styling as that for which so many of its predecessors have been known.

But the newly updated S8 offers even more Audi-typical advanced drivetrain and suspension technology as standard, much of which isn't available on any other A8.

Quattro four-wheel drive is there to put the engine's 563bhp to effective use, of course, but here you get an active Sport rear differential in addition to the mechanical centre diff of other A8s and four-wheel Dynamic steering as standard (it's an option on the rest of the range).