Audi RS Q8 Review 2024

If you consider a 600PS wolf in 2300kg sheep’s clothing to be a rare automotive creation, think again – you’ll be surprised at just how many rivals the Audi RS Q8 can muster. Whether you consider these cars large SUVs with supercar performance, or supercars with large SUV space and practicality, there are plenty of them.

Either way, assuming you have a wallet stout enough to consider the Audi RS Q8 in the first place, you’ll probably also want to have a look at the closely-related Porsche Cayenne Coupe S, the divisive BMW X6M Competition and the Mercedes GLE Coupe 63 S in your quest for the best high-performance SUV.

Or you may want to consider luxury SUVs such as the Aston Martin DBX, or perhaps the Range Rover Sport SVR. And what about the outrageous Lamborghini Urus?

Ironically, as our Audi RS Q8 review will explain, it starts to look like quite good value for money in the face of such competition.

Some have said that the Audi RS Q8 is better looking than Lamborghini’s Urus.

Our jury’s still out on that, but one thing’s for sure; it’s hard to disguise something of this stature as anything but a huge SUV, even if the specimen we drove sports a front spoiler like a brushed metal replica of Salvador Dali’s famous moustache.

On board, but for lashings of RS branding, you’ll find things pretty much where you left them in the standard Audi Q8, and that’s no bad thing at all.

So it’s under the bonnet and at all four corners that the Audi RS Q8 really earns its go-faster stripes.

In the engine room is the same cracking 4.0 litre twin-turbo V8 petrol unit on duty in the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Lamborghini Urus, here developing 600PS and 800Nm (more than the Porsche, less than the Lambo).

Via eight-speed automatic transmission with paddle shift interference, all-wheel drive and extraordinarily trick suspension, that equates to 0-62mph in just 3.8 seconds and, more amusingly, 0-124mph in only 13.7 seconds – phenomenal performance for a 2.3 tonne car.

Yet what really boggles about the Audi RS Q8 isn’t so much the startling straight-line speed, but the handling. With adaptive air suspension, active anti-roll technology and all-wheel steering all mucking in, it’s astonishing to drive through the twisty stuff.

How can anything this size and shape provide such prodigious levels of grip and poise?

The car might not offer the last word in communication as to the intimacies of its relationship with the road surface, but it remains utterly unflappable no matter how hard you push.

Driving the Audi RS Q8 at pace is more a question of clinging on in admiration than pressing on with outright glee, but it’s still hugely impressive for all that.

Prices for the three model Audi RS Q8 range start at £112,405 with Carbon Black and Vorsprung variants subject to largely trim-related price hikes with the occasional extra toy – such as a head-up display with Vorsprung trim – lobbed in for good measure.

But the standard car is already extremely well-equipped and, if anything costing over 100 grand could be so dubbed, surprisingly competitively priced.

Measuring 5012mm in length and 2190mm wide, this is a vast car. With a wheelbase just 2mm short of a stonking three metres, there’s stacks of room front and back, and in the load area.

The 40:20:40 split folding rear bench seat slides to and fro, and the individual seating elements both recline and fold flat. Luggage capacity starts at an impressive 605 litres, increasing to 1755 litres with the rear seats flopped forward.

The driving position is first class, with outstanding ergonomics, and the electrically adjustable front RS Super Sport seats combine heating and ventilation with superb side bolster support.

You’ll need it. Rear seat leg and headroom is outstanding, but, as ever, the middle seat passenger is short changed in the width department. Happily, the seat cushion slides through 100mm in a 60:40 split, so they can pinch a little extra shoulder room on one side.

Plus, courtesy of adaptive air suspension, you can lower the whole car by 65mm via buttons in the luggage compartment to make filling the loadspace easier.

On board, the usual superb Audi build and material quality abounds, lifted to just a whisker short of vulgarity by extra RS detailing and trim. Up the ante on trim levels, and wonderful Alcantara joins the fray.

The top-of-the-range Vorsprung interior even introduces polished grey oak trim elements. This sounds somewhat daunting, but actually plays second fiddle to the dominant piano black sufficiently demurely to pass muster.

The latest Audi cockpits are devoted to the digital and the touchscreen, and this is a prime example. The driver gets an Audi Virtual Cockpit – a 12.3-inch high-resolution LCD display which, as well as variations on a let’s-make-digital-look-as-much-like-analogue-as-possible theme, offers more sporting, RS specific menus and options.

It really is tough to top a premium Audi interior and you won’t unearth even a whiff of scratchy plastic surfaces or less than elegantly tactile surfaces, no matter where you fondle and prod.

The centre console houses what Audi calls MMI Navigation Plus with MMI touch. This is a multi-media interface boasting two touchscreens with haptic feedback, the 10.1-inch upper screen taking care of infotainment, the low 8.6-inch offering exclusively reserved for air-conditioning control.

Both screens are of exemplary quality, visually far more pleasing than anything rivals have to offer, show no perceptible lag in response to the touch of a finger, and benefit considerably from that haptic feedback to let you know your digital orders have been received and understood.

Naturally, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are on hand, and we found wireless phone connectivity a doddle. You also get a 36-month subscription to Audi Connect with Amazon Alexa integration.

This allows Alexa acolytes to boss her around on-board with access to actions such as managing shopping lists, smart home control, weather information, Amazon music and Audible.

A natural voice recognition system is also included to demand various things of the car without such frequent need to apply a sprucing Wet-Wipe to the touchscreens.

The Audi RS Q8 we drove was fitted with the £2095 Comfort and Sound pack which, amongst other goodies, upgrades the stereo to a Bang & Olufsen Premium Sound System sporting 17 loudspeakers, a 16-channel amplifier and a massive 730 watts of power.

The least expensive Audi RSQ8 will set you back a thumping £112,405. And you’ll need another £2095 to install the sublime Bang & Olufsen stereo fitted as standard with the top-of-the-range trim level.

But other than that, the equipment specification is so utterly comprehensive you’re not going to need to spend the price of a new hatchback to bring the toy count up to scratch.

There are two higher trim levels, the £122,905 Audi RS Q8 Carbon Black and the £130,205 Audi RS Q8 Vorsprung.

The Carbon Black majors, as the name suggests, in carbon, adding a deal of largely elegant carbon fibre exterior detailing, and an RS interior styling pack with grey contrast stitching and lashings of Alcantara. Some would argue it’s worth it for the Alcantara steering wheel rim alone…

The top-of-the-range Audi RS Q8 Vorsprung adds a hatful of premium features such as power door closure, a front seat massage feature, a panoramic sunroof, a head-up display and that banging Bang & Olufsen stereo.

With the Cayenne Coupe Turbo no longer available, Porsche doesn’t field a Cayenne that can quite match the Audi RS Q8’s performance. However, costing from only £84,500, the new Cayenne Coupe S’s 474PS will be sufficient poke for many.

BMW’s X6M Competition enters the fray at £129,550, and the Mercedes GLE Coupe 63 S won’t get out of bed for less than £140,000. All of which makes the Audi RS Q8 better value than you might at first think.

The Audi RS Q8 is equipped with a cunning 48V mild-hybrid system that will switch off the engine between speeds of 34 and 99mph if conditions are right.

It will also shut down four of the eight cylinders under light throttle loads. Even so Audi quotes gently sharp intake fuel consumption and CO2 figures of 21.2mpg and 301g/km respectively, which is pretty much what you’d expect from a 2.3-tonne car armed with 600PS.

The first year VED will cost £2605, and we’ve unearthed leasing deals from just under £1500 per month. As ever, though, the bottom line with a machine like this is if you need to ask, you can’t afford it.

Here we find every facet of the art of ride and handling engineering applied with extraordinary guile.

Adaptive air suspension, electromechanical active roll stabilisation and all-wheel steering gang up with the generous rubber footprints afforded by 22-inch wheels to award the Audi RS Q8 absurd levels of grip, poise and agility.

There are no complaints about ride quality, which is as firm as you might expect from an RS-branded Audi, but always supple and never jarring.

The steering, though largely numb, is reassuringly weighted appropriately for such a big car, and the active anti-roll system makes a very decent fist indeed of keeping things on an even keel, no matter how brutish your approach to cornering becomes.

All-wheel steering is the Audi RS Q8’s trump card, however. In high-speed turns you’ll be relieved it keeps the rear wheels in the same direction as the fronts to ensure that 2.3 tonne giant is pointing where you aimed it.

And during slow maneouvres, it means the rear wheels can turn the opposite way to the fronts to produce a hilariously tight turning circle, allowing easy access to undersized parking bays.

Audi Drive Select offers the usual range of driving modes (Auto, Comfort, Dynamic, Efficiency, Off-road and All-road) which adjust the engine, transmission, steering and air suspension, as well as individually configurable RS1 and RS2 settings. These require on-screen tinkering to set up, but can be accessed via steering wheel-mounted button thereafter.

As usual, Audi’s Auto mode generally takes care of business, but the powertrain can be a tad slow in responding to a prod of the throttle when you demand power to barrel out of a corner at pace.

Dynamic mode cures this, but with something of a ride quality penalty, so you may actually find yourself using RS1 to dial up a combination of faster throttle response, but a comfortable suspension setting.

Configured in this way, the car will cover ground with extraordinary placidity and relentless pace, and yet somehow never allow the driver to fully occupy the front seat in proceedings.

There’s always a slight feeling that for all its unarguable abilities, all that engineering is keeping you at arm’s length from a properly immersive experience. That’s probably a good thing if you’re busy crushing continents, but not so much if you’re just out for a blast.

The Audi RS Q8 is flung down the road by the same superlative 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 petrol unit found in the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and Lamborghini Urus, here developing 600PS and 800Nm (which is more than the Porsche, and less than the Lambo).

Via eight-speed automatic transmission with paddleshifts, all-wheel drive and exceptional trick suspension, that equates to 0-62mph in just 3.8 seconds and 0-124mph in only 13.7 seconds – astonishing performance for a 2.3-tonne car. Top speed is limited to 155mph.

Interestingly, though, despite a threatening bass grumble at tickover and a pleasing baritone on the move, the noises never open up into the cacophony you might expect from such a powerplant.

Mucking about with drive mode selection and the RS1 and RS2 settings will elicit a slightly more perceptible sound scale, but generally the Audi RS Q8 sounds far more appealing to pedestrians than those on board.

The Audi RS Q8 reaps five Euro NCAP stars with a full orchestra of assistance systems, the most unwanted of which (lane-keeping assistance), happily, may be deactivated by a prolonged press of the indicator stalk tip.

Even better news is that it doesn’t re-emerge with every start up.

There’s a head-up display, a 360-degree camera, and assistance with pretty much everything. Every possible scenario, both urban and rural, is catered for by some sort of assistant determined to safeguard from hitting, or being hit by, anything approaching from any angle.

For instance, buyers can look forward to intersection assist, side assist, exit warning and rear cross-traffic assist, adaptive cruise control, active lane assist, efficiency assist, turn assist, swerve assist, camera-based traffic sign recognition and emergency assist.

There’s also a suite of parking assistance tech on offer.

The towing capacity of the Audi RS Q8 is 3500kg braked, while the maximum load unbraked is 750kg,

The standard Audi RS Q8 features 20-inch 10-spoke alloy wheels in silver, Matrix LED headlights, adaptive air suspension, electromechanical active roll stabilisation, all-wheel steering, all-wheel drive with sport differential and keyless entry and start.

There’s also rear privacy glass, power tailgate, RS heated and ventilated front sports seats, four-zone air-conditioning, a 12.3-inch digital driver’s instrument binnacle, a 10.1-inch infotainment haptic touch screen, a 8.6-inch HVAC control haptic touch screen, a 10-speaker Audi sound system and Audi Connect with Amazon Alexa integration.

The Audi RS Q8 Carbon Black builds on this comprehensive equipment specification with the addition of 23-inch Y-spoke black alloy wheels, a carbon exterior styling pack featuring the front radiator frame, front and rear bumper inserts, rear lighting strip, side sill and window trims, and door mirrors in carbon fibre, plus carbon twill inlays.

The interior features an RS design pack with contrast grey stitching to the steering wheel, seats, door panels and floor mats, and grey seatbelts. Infotainment is enhanced by the addition of an Audi music interface with two USB-C ports in the rear.

The Audi RS Q8 Vorsprung further builds on the Carbon Black trim with power door closure, and anthracite black exterior styling pack, gloss black Audi rings and RS Q8 logos, and a panoramic glass sunroof.

The interior features polished grey oak inlays, black Alcantara roof lining an Alcantara steering wheel rim, a head-up display and a Bang & Olufsen 17-speaker premium sound system.

Numerous driver assistance systems include a 360-degree camera, park assist with parking aid plus, Audi side assist, Audi pre-sense front and rear, cross traffic assist front and rear, collision avoidance assist and adaptive cruise control with emergency assist.