So there’s a new top of the range Audi in town, except right now it’s not in town,
as you can see it’s in the wilderness of the Chilean Atacama desert which is where
Audi has chosen to launch the new Q8 luxury SUV, as you do! Now, do not adjust your sets,
you have not watched a first drive review video on this car before although you might
think you have. Believe it or not, this is the sixth large SUV from the elephantine Volkswagen
group on the same MLB evo platform to be launched in the last three years, it follows the Q7
sister car but also the Bentley Bentayga, the Volkswagen Touareg, Porsche Cayenne and
the Lamborghini Urus. The Q8 isn’t like a lot of those other SUV’s because it’s
sort of half SUV, half four-door grand touring coupe so it’s got frameless doors and a
low roofline, big features and flared arches and it’s trying to look a bit more desirable
than the average big family car. From some angles you will have noticed it does look
a lot like a Lamborghini Urus and interestingly if you talk to Audi’s designers about that
car, they’ll tell you that it was the Q8 project that started first and the Lamborghini
that piggybacked on their efforts, so without the Q8 there would be no Urus, or maybe that’s
just what they want us to believe. The car is wider, slightly lower to the ground and
shorter overall than the Q7 sister car on which it’s based. It launches in the UK
later this summer with only one engine, a 3-litre 50TDI which will be a mild hybrid
diesel, there will be a less powerful diesel and a more powerful petrol coming next year.
You get lots and lots of active chassis technology with the car either as standard or as option
so there’s proper centre diff based four-wheel-drive and adaptive sport tuned air suspension as
standard, if you move up to the higher end Vorsprung trim you also get four-wheel steering
and just about every active safety system known to man. Prices for the sort of mid ranged
diesel are going to start at about £65,000 moving up to just north of £80,000 for the
car with all the bells and whistles and that’s actually a lot of money but it’s pretty
competitive when you look at like for like examples of the Range Rover Velar, BMW X6,
Maserati Levante, there is no like for like Porsche Cayenne anymore because Porsche no
longer makes diesels but there you go, that’s just the crazy world we live in. Inside the
car, the Q8 sort of picks up where Audi’s big saloons, A6, A7, A8 left off, very leathery
and chromey, very high end, very expensive feeling, the infotainment set up sort of dominates
the driving environment, there are a couple of touchscreens, one above the other, one
slightly bigger than the other, they’re pretty imposing but they’re actually pretty
easy to use and they certainly look pretty sophisticated, along with those you obviously
get Audi’s virtual cockpit display so between the three, at times it is more like your flying
some kind of low level private jet than driving a car, it’s all very high tech. So to drive
the car is fairly sporty, it’s got plenty of performance, it’s just not quite up there
at the level of your Range Rover Sport SVR or your Cayenne Turbo or even sort of a high
end Range Rover Velar for sort of driver involvement and performance level, it’s just not quite
been allowed to hit that mark yet I suspect, that’s mostly to do with engine range. So
there’s no V8 petrol turbo option for now so the performance level of the car and its
sort of handling appeal, it’s not quite up there with your Porsche Cayenne Turbo's or Range Rover Sport SVR’s,
having said that, the car’s good at what it does, it’s got a nice broad range of
dynamic ability so it can be comfy at one moment and then fast and agile enough the
next moment and listen it’s a big luxury Audi, at the moment it’s not really aiming
to take on the Cayenne turbos and the Range Rover SVR’s of this world, fair enough.
There is just this lingering suggestion at the moment for unfulfilled potential about
this car, you know if Audi wanted to make a really big statement with an all new flagship
vehicle which is effectively what this car is, I think it could have just dialled the
design a little bit more, you could have given us that real flagship version of the car from
the get go and we might have all been standing here sort of saying wow, I never expected that.
As it is, the car is a desirable luxury SUV but I’m not sure you look at it and
you’re amazed by it. I’m not sure it’s quite up there from a sort of styling appeal
on the level of a Range Rover Velar and it’s certainly not up there with a Cayenne Turbo
for driver appeal but who knows, maybe it will get there, we will watch with interest.