Audi A8 L 60 TFSI 2021 UK first drive

Perhaps it’s a size thing – or, at the very least, a purpose thing. After all, we’re on board with gratuitously powerful sports cars of any variety, but driving a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 Audi A8 in 2021 (especially around Norway, where more cars are electric than are not) does feel like turning up to a bar mitzvah with a plate of pork chops.

Still, the Audi's competition is also rife with chunky V8s (think Mercedes- Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series); and yet more pertinent is the fact that this A8 will also offer a 3.0-litre petrol V6, a 3.0-litre diesel V6 and an Audi A8 plug-in hybrid with a longer electric range than before, plus the sporty Audi S8.

This is a mild overhaul for the A8, with the significant new additions being a bigger grille, bigger front intakes, new OLED tail-lights, new infotainment software and, on range-topping Vorsprung trim, new digital matrix LED headlights with no fewer than 1.3 million micromirrors, which don’t so much illuminate the road as deliver a forward-facing sunrise.

It’s peachy to drive in precisely the suave-yet-potent way that you want from an A8. Our test car was a non-UK model, using a 453bhp version of the 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 that we will get in the S8. The permanent Quattro four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering and predictive air suspension of our test car is all pertinent to the hot model, though.

Adaptive air suspension is fitted across the entire A8 range, but the predictive air suspension of the S8 uses a camera to read the road ahead and prepare accordingly. It not only softens everything for a speed bump but also ‘leans’ the body in fast turns to mimic an active anti-roll bar and to help to reduce pitch and dive.

It works, too, keeping body control precisely in check, despite the A8’s substantial heft, but it must be said the Audi falls short of the S-Class’s more tactile, fluid steering responses. It’s still a confident thing to wield around town or on a fast winding road, mind; tactile it isn’t, but it feels indomitable the second you set off.

It’s relaxing, too, shrugging off big bumps and high frequency road patina with equal nonchalance, although there’s a subtle patter in Dynamic driving mode at slower speeds if we’re really nitpicking. It’s a real shame that the predictive ride system will be offered to us only on the S8, because it could solve the significant issue that the A8 doesn’t quite ride as well as you might hope.