Cars with Jan Coomans. Audi RS Q8

There’s no way to hide the sheer power of the engine once you floor the RS Q8’s throttle pedal. As soon as the turbochargers spin up, you get slammed into the back of the seat and the cabin fills with the sound of 8 cylinders worth of exhaust gases rushing towards the exits in a big hurry. If your passengers aren’t used to rocket launches or roller coasters, you might get some complaints if you subject them to these kind of G forces unannounced. It is a lovely party trick however, and it’s very difficult to not tap into these huge power reserves all the time because it’s a lot of fun — with the slight caveat that you do go through quite a lot of fuel in the process. I guess there’s always something.

Still, the RS Q8 is about comfort first and speed second. The build quality is superb, in typical Audi fashion, and there’s every electronic gadget you can think of to make your life easier. The adaptive cruise control works really well in traffic jams, especially because it doesn’t cut out even during longer periods of standing completely still. It’s still a bit weird for me how in this 21st century the same car can be actually be great at going both very fast and very slowly. The RS’s extra capabilities over the regular Q8 models simply don’t seem to get in the way of anything. There’s nary a hint of compromise. The ride is in fact slightly stiffer, I suppose, but it’s still compliant to such a degree that I prefer it over the regular car’s. The increased responsiveness which this version offers the driver is definitely noticeable, but it doesn’t make the car tiresome on longer journeys.

Of course, car this large and heavy is never going to be your weapon of choice for carving up small twisty roads, but when pressing on it’s nice to have a car that responds eagerly to your steering inputs. Not that there was a lot of opportunity for going fast on this city test drive, but I had a few small opportunities to attack a corner exit full throttle and the way this Q8 puts its nails into the road and claws itself forward with nary a hint of understeer is extremely impressive. It sort of feels like it shouldn’t be possible. You do sense that there’s a lot of technology and processing power at work to make it do this, but at the end of the day the laws of physics are being left licking their wounds.

Design wise, I’ve always liked the Q8 shape and it’s particularly successful for a car of this type which is trying to combine elegance with aggression. Sure, it could do without a fake plastic vent or two, but then the entire car industry has been knee deep in those for years now. On the inside, the interior looks exceedingly modern with lots and lots of digital screens. The touch screens are lovely to use as they offer tactile feedback which make you feel the “clicks” you’re making even though you’re not actually pressing a button. Less successful do I find the graphics on the digital dashboard, it’s a bit of a mess in terms of various bits of info and in the “sporty” dashboard setting you get the central rev counter made up of two bars which come down with climbing RPMs… it’s just hard to read. I preferred the more analog looking gauges like Audi was using previously.

Still, the fact that we have to dig this deep to find something to complain about shows how good the car is as an all-rounder. It can do pretty much whatever you want, and however quickly you want it done. If there is one elephant in the room however, it would be the existence of the Audi RS6. I know people insist on buying their cars in SUV form these days, for some reason or other, but the RS6 offers the same engine and similar interior space but weighs about 300 kilograms less. Just saying, people, that other shapes of car still exist and they can be pretty awesome too. It’s not like you were all planning to take your super SUVs off-roading now is it?

When we limit ourselves to the SUV segment, the RS Q8 does stack up incredibly well against the competition. The Audi is second to none when it comes to comfort and interior quality, and having held the Nurburgring record for quite a long time, it’s definitely among the very fastest out there. They wouldn’t have put the RS badge on there if it wasn’t.