Audi S8 Fast Fleet test – living with Ingolstadt's 563bhp flagship saloon

A month in and now with another 2000 miles (and counting) on the clock, KY73 OTZ is well and truly run in. This is mainly thanks to editor-in-chief Gallagher chalking off the miles for me in a week of far-flung meetings that necessitated innumerous motorway miles.

Upon handing back the key, Stu commented upon how well-suited the S8 is for covering big distances and long days behind the wheel. It’s exactly what you’d hope for from a car such as this, of course, but it was still music to my ears to have it confirmed, as the December page on the kitchen family planner made it look like the M25, M62, A1 and A52 were about to become my new best mates.

> Audi S8 review – an old-school performance car with old-school appeal

Ahead of what was threatening to become a National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation remake, I had a few days of shorter journeys during which I could get acquainted with the now unshackled S8. For a car of its size, the acceleration is astonishingly rapid – 62mph arrives in just 3.8sec – while the predictive active suspension is a marvel. You can feel it adjusting to its situation, reducing pitch during acceleration, say, or leaning into a corner (by as much as 3 degrees) by raising the outside of the car and lowering the inside, thus lessening its effect on occupants. And all the while it’s reading the road ahead with a camera to anticipate and iron out the flaws of the UK’s moon-surface roads. Very clever stuff.

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I also can’t think of a car I’ve driven that has been so well equipped – light shows on ignition-on, massaging seats, electric sunblinds for the rear windows, digital matrix headlights painting the road ahead unlike anything I’ve experienced… I could go on – and no doubt will over the next few months.

Niggles? The passenger-side rear window has decided to randomly lower itself a few times, and likewise the boot has opened on a couple of occasions after locking. Most odd. And while the various bits of driver assistance tech are generally quite easy to turn on or (more importantly) off, the dashboard insists on aggressively telling me to ‘have a rest’ every half an hour or so and I’ve yet to find a way to make it stop. Still, if the occasional alert is the worst I’ll have to endure during all the miles that lay ahead, I think I can live with that. – Richard Browne

This story was first featured in evo issue 318.