An unusual weekend in an Audi S8 Plus

The Audi S8 is proper stealth transport. It’s not visually aggressive, but this £98,395 Plus model sends 597bhp and 553lb ft from its 4.0-litre twin turbo V8 to all four wheels.

There’s an eight-speed automatic gearbox, and since the S8 is only available as a ‘short’ wheelbase model (although it’s still a chunk over five metres long…), it doesn’t look like you’re just the chauffeur, but that you might actually use the car for other things.

Things such as heading up to Scarborough for the Maserati Tour de Yorkshire bike race with the family. And yes, you can see my bike on the back. I love putting bikes on cars, just looks so incongruous. I hate having them on the roof (car park height restrictors), and do constantly worry about them falling off the back part way up the M1, but four people inside meant it had to travel outside.

Rather than a straight review (we’ve driven the Audi S8 Plus on the autobahn before) this is basically about spending a bit of time with a car and using it to do stuff. It’s an occasional series, which we last did iwith a Bentley Mulsanne Speed, and that seemed to go down quite well. So this time it’s Audi’s stealth bomber.

See what I mean about it being stealthy? No wings or diffusers to spoil the understatement, or make it tricky to attach my Saris Bones RS rack. A bit of Yorkshire road grime helps to dial down the impact yet further, so you almost don’t notice the quad exhausts.

The flip side of this is that it doesn’t really look like £100k worth of car. But that all depends on what you want your £100k outlay to do for you. Personally I love the Q car vibe this gives off.

The S8 is great up front. The only things I’m not sure about are the bar-shaped gearlever and positioning of the controls for the infotainment on an angle – although I suspect it was designed that way to allow you to rest your wrist on the top of one while operating the other.

Anyway, it’s beautifully built, simple the use, the seats are superb, the driving position is great and it has a commendably thin-rimmed steering wheel. As a result the whole car feels smaller than it ought to, and more wieldy to drive.

It’s not, if I’m honest, up to the tech and glitz standards set by the current Mercedes S-Class, it's more standard exec level than something becoming a £100k car, but this is an S8. It’s all about the driving.

And to drive, the S8 is magic, it really is. I’d have this over a Merc S63 or BMW 760iL. It’s not just that the Quattro makes it more secure, but that the whole car moves so well. At 2,065kg, it’s as heavy as its rivals, but it’s so clean and well balanced through corners, rides so well and is so damn fast.

But there are no edges to any of its manners or habits, every dynamic facet, from the way the turbos ramp up, to the damping over speedbumps, is polished and buffed. It hits the exact spot it needs to, manages to feel smaller than it actually is and carries speed beautifully.

What this meant on the drive to Scarborough was that, when the M1 and A1 ground to a halt and we took to single lane roads around Holme-On-Spalding-Moor and Foxholes (yep, these are real British place names), I could ‘make progress’ without anyone else in the car being aware of it. It’s deceptively fast, hushed and disguises its speed brilliantly.

The smoothness of its responses also means it’s massively flattering, and here’s just enough engine and exhaust noise to be amusing. It’s audible mainly because there’s almost nothing from anywhere else. This is effortless speed, and genuinely engaging, too.

Here’s the centrepiece. This biturbo 4-litre V8 has 597bhp and 553lb ft from 2500-5500rpm. Audi claims 0-60mph in 3.8secs, and that feels easily achievable. Upgrade to the ceramic brakes (£8,650, ahem) and the speed limiter will be bumped up to 189mph. Bet on top speed of over 200mph unlimited.

Speaking of such things, I drove Litchfield’s RS6 recently, and they spoke about just how over-engineered this twin turbo V8 is, and the power gains you can get from it. Their RS6 puts out 750bhp…

This is specially for those of you who don’t live in the UK. Yep, we really do have place names like this.

The question is which came first, the place or the phrase?

Back to more prosaic matters, and what to do if you’re a passenger who doesn't want to head to the Land of Nod. You can have rear seat screens in the S8, and they cost £2,370. Ours didn’t have them. Safe to say this alternative set up didn’t cost £2,370.

You can get a lightsaber in the boot. No, really you can. This stuff matters. Well, it does to 10 year olds. The boot is broad, but not especially deep. It did manage to swallow all the clobber for a weekend away, though.

Look, there it all is.

I don’t think 22mpg is too bad a result at all. With my Look 695 serving as a spoiler out back, four people and a weekend’s worth of luggage on board, and a route that included 60 miles of single lane stuff, I would have been happy to have topped 20mpg. Without all the clobber the S8 Plus did about 25-26mpg.

Time for a verdict, even if this isn’t a conventional review. The Audi S8 Plus is a car that will only find a narrow audience – people who want a fast, understated luxury saloon. Everyone who’d ‘made it’ used to want one of those, but now those people want big shiny SUVs. I think that’s a bit of a shame.

So the S8 feels a bit out of step, but I’d really like to commend Audi for this one. I reckon it’s one of the best fast cars they make. In fact, in terms of hitting its brief, I think this might be the very best fast car they make.

Oh, and one last thing. This was Scarborough on the morning I went off to ride my bike. Nothing to do with the car here, just a faint bit of awe to get up to weather like this in the north of England.