2007 Audi S8

Subtle, Supple Supercar

There are luxury sedans with more cylinders, horsepower, bells, whistles and buttons, but none with as much simple sophistication, driver friendliness and sheer classiness as the S8.

The Audi S8 is an extremely fast, hard-accelerating luxury sedan that exhibits none of the ride and comfort compromises that too often limit the appeal of more hardcore sport sedans, such as Audi’s own compact RS 4. The S8 isn’t intended to be a snap-shifting corner carver — though it can do that — but a large yet discreet high-performance sedan for people who disdain wings, spoilers, iridescent paint and hood scoops that make obvious their car’s sporting intentions.

Nonetheless, S8 owners may not be able to resist boasting that their ride has “a Lamborghini engine,” but that’s a bit misleading. Audi and Lamborghini have no doubt benefited from each other in terms of engineering development ever since Audi purchased Lamborghini in 1998. The 450-hp 5.2-liter V10 in the Audi S8 is similar to the V10 in the Lamborghini Gallardo, but is configured and tuned in an entirely different way. One drives a nimble Italian two-seat sports car, the other powers a large, long-range German cruiser in which comfortable, effortless acceleration is more important than screaming, high-winding horsepower. And at an estimated rating of 15 mpg city/21 mpg highway, the S8’s engine is actually more frugal than the Gallardo’s.

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There is an indefinable blend of power, weighting and tactile sensations — particularly in the steering and suspension systems — that makes the S8 a totally different driving experience than the big German and Japanese sedans in its price category. The S8 is in some ways like a supple Jaguar but with lots of backseat room and — for better or worse — reserved Teutonic styling with a hint of Italian emotion (Audi’s group design director, Walter De Silva, is an impassioned Italian).

Audi executives say that the company is pursuing customers it says are more independent-minded than typical luxury-car buyers, and creating a full-size, high-performance sedan with power, pricing and performance that none of the competition exactly matches is directly in line with that strategy: Mercedes-Benz’s S65 AMG is much pricier and more powerful, while BMW’s V10-powered M5 sedan is smaller and more performance oriented than the S8. Audi expects to sell perhaps 1,000 S8s a year in North America, to buyers who appreciate a car that looks much the same as its more sedate corporate cousin, the A8, but has an entirely different character.

Exterior

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Only those in the know will recognize the S8 for what it is — a very special car. I hadn’t driven the big Audi 15 minutes before getting a swivel-headed double-take from a passing BMW M3 driver, but the car went unnoticed the rest of my week with it (admittedly in quiet, rural Upstate New York).

The big Audi grille is so aggressive, even on Audi’s smallest sedan, the A4, that the distinctiveness of the S8’s schnoz might be lost. The grille is gray instead of otherwise stock black inside the gaping chrome surround, and it has a dozen prominent vertical bars as well as the normal horizontal accents. Unique exterior badges consist of two discreet “V10” symbols on the front fenders and a small “S8” on the trunklid. The biggest giveaways are the huge 20-inch wheels and the quartet of exhaust outlets, which are unique to Audi’s S-series cars.

Interior

The S8’s instrument panel is classic, clean and simple — no trickery, no light shows, no strangely shaped instruments — in large part because of the brilliance of its MMI (Multi-Media Interface) computerized system controls. Unlike competing systems from BMW and Mercedes-Benz, operation of the MMI central selector knob and the moderate number of buttons that select both the broad categories (navigation, radio, car systems, etc.) and the subsets within those categories (preset stations, maps, destinations, etc.) can be explained in a paragraph rather than an inch-thick owner’s manual.

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Not so smart, however, is the S8’s keyless ignition system, and its faults extend to all manufacturers who seem unable to resist this unnecessary technology. We’ve heard stories of husbands marooning their wives when they unwittingly say goodbye at the airport with the key still in their pocket, and now I know two people — OK, one of them is me — who have parked an Audi, walked away and come back an hour later to find the car still silently idling, having forgotten to push the electronic engine-stop button.

The S8's seats are firm and relatively supportive but are by no means thick-bolstered sport seats, because that's not the character of the car. The rear seats have large headrests that can't be retracted, so they obscure a portion of the rearward view. The electrically tiltable/telescoping steering wheel has a goodly range of in-and-out movement but limited up-and-down play, possibly because sober German engineers don’t want to give you the opportunity to obscure the instruments. Another Teutonic touch: The rear seats have two small cup holders in the central armrest but three ashtrays, the center one big enough to hold a carton’s worth of butts.