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| Understated elegance: no flash spoilers or skirts to advertise this A8's phenomenal performance |
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See an A8 on the road and you probably won't give it a second glance. Unlike most cars of this performance (and price), you won't see heads turning, or hear catcalls and "phwoarr, look at that rear spoiler" from passers-by - and that's exactly what Audi intended. Our 4.2 TDI V8-engined test car might have 345bhp and, more to the point, a phenomenal 590lb ft of torque, giving it a claimed 0-62mph time of just 5.5 seconds, but this luxury saloon is the very essence of understated elegance. It's a car for grown-ups. Fairly wealthy grown-ups who don't want to be flash with their cash.
The new A8 has been enhanced across the board: it's safer, faster and more agile, with an even more comfortable cabin and there's a massive improvement in fuel consumption, too - up 19 per cent in the case of our test car, to 37.2mpg. Meanwhile, CO2 emissions have also been greatly reduced: 199g/km for a car of this performance is quite remarkable. But the other thing the A8 now offers is, says Audi, "an opportunity to pack it with state-of-the-art technology... which will filter down through other models in time".
So let's look at some of that technology. How about a new eight-speed Tiptronic gearbox (standard across the range) which 'talks' to the navigation system, so the car 'knows', for example, not to shift up a gear if there's a series of tight bends coming up? The headlights are in on the conversation, too, and when they realise they're on the Continent, they'll politely dip themselves in the other direction to avoid dazzling traffic driving on the right. Then there's the thermal imaging built into the four rings of the Audi symbol on the front grille, and a sat nav system with handwriting recognition to help you scribble in a postcode without all that fiddling about.
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