First drive: Audi joins luxury elite with new A8

THINK German luxury and inevitably the Mercedes-Benz S-class and BMW 7 Series come to mind, but now with its second generation A8, Audi is pressing its claim for full membership of this exclusive club.

Audi performed an eight-year apprenticeship with the first A8, the car performing acceptably well in this small but lucrative part of the new car market, but the German manufacturer now wants a bigger slice of the action.

Having claimed around 15,000 sales annually out of a worldwide total of 230,000 for the segment, now the Ingolstadt-based subsidiary of Volkswagen is looking to grow sales toward 25,000 per annum. Australia has a part to play in that climb - albeit a small one.

Audi Australia is aiming for 75 sales per annum after the new A8 is launched here in May, 2003. That may not sound like a lot, but it represents a leap of about 300 per cent over the current annual average.

The car with which Audi intends to achieve that growth shares much with its predecessor.

Its exterior styling is evolutionary. It still uses the aluminium chassis and body panel technology pioneered by its predecessor the initial engine offerings are developed versions of the V8s seen previously the suspension remains a four-link affair up front and trapezoidal links at the rear without any change to the geometry and drive continues to be delivered to all four wheels via Audi's quattro system.

Yet the styling has cleverly made the car look smaller than it actually is, while adding a splash of flair and aggression.

The aluminium technology has been refined and simplified so the car is not only much more torsionally rigid, but also quicker to build.

The engines are mated to ZF's marvellous six-speed automatic gearbox with tiptronic semi-manual adjustment and the suspension linkages are teamed with a new air suspension and continuously variable damper design which can be set on a number of different performance levels and ride heights, depending on the driving environment.

Audi is also selling the whole package as being much more dynamic, a move which underlines the company's position as the head of the sporting group within the Volkswagen conglomerate - a group which also includes Seat and Lamborghini.

But there's also VW's recently launched Phaeton, which does not go on sale in Australia until 2004.

The two cars share many driveline and suspension components, but the Phaeton is pitched at a much more conservative and more traditional luxury audience.

The warming up of A8 gives the two sister cars room to move, a necessity considering the target is for them to claim a combined 40,000 sales, much more than double what the old A8 achieved annually.

The A8 broke cover earlier this month at the Paris motor show. The line-up shown there is what we get in Australia until the long wheelbase version with an extra 130mm of rear seat room is launched in 2003.

The LWB will also introduce the latest version of the VW Group 6.0-litre W12 to the latest A8, although it is undecided whether that engine will come to Australia.

In fact, the LWB will be an "order only" vehicle - its anticiapted $220,00-plus price prohibiting such luxuries as floor stock.

The first two arrivals will be short wheelbase cars, although they are still a hefty 5051mm, 1894mm wider and with a 2944 wheelbase. These key measurements are broadly comparable to the old car bar the wheelbase, which extends 65mm thanks to shifting the front axle forward. This also has a positive two per cent impact on weight distribution.

Thanks to the aluminium space frame chassis, body panels and extensive use of alloy in the suspension and other components, the A8 weighs in at a lithe (for the class) 1770kg. That's only 100kg more than the new base specification Ford Falcon XT. Not only is it light, but it is slippery too with a highly competitive 0.27 coefficient of drag.

It's a technology that's gaining popularity in the luxury class, with the new Jaguar XJ also made from aluminium.

The engine choices kick off with a 3.7-litre V8 which produces 206kW at 6000rpm and 360Nm at 3500rpm, while the 4.2 is rated at 246kW at 6500rpm and 430Nm at 3500rpm. The 3.7 reaches 100km/h in a claimed 7.3 seconds while the 4.2 achieves the same mark in 6.3 seconds. Both are electronically speed governed to 250km/h.

Beyond that they share most mechanical and equipment specifications, although the 4.2 will do a little better in this regard by getting the more aggressive 19-inch tyre package. The 3.7 may have to make do with 18-inch wheels and tyres.

Audi Australia guarantees the equipment level will be impressively high, with pricing probably set either side of $200,000.

On top of the usual inundation of wood, leather, power everything and killer Bose sound system, the standard equipment list includes a new electro-magnetic parking brake, tyre pressure monitoring system, plethora of airbags, cornering light system that shows up the edge of the road when rounding bends and the four-zone air-conditioning that it shares with Phateon.

Options are likely to be restricted to new hi-tech items like active cruise control and a fingerprint-based personalisation system for the car's comfort settings.

But perhaps the most interesting new feature is MMI, or the Multi Media Interface. This is Audi's take on BMW's iDrive driver control system, which replaces a forest of buttons with a single mouse controller and a series of levels that are easily accessed and - just as importantly - exited back to the entry point thanks to a "return" button that sits behind the mouse on the horizontal centre console.

The MMI is the centrepiece of a completely redesigned interior that has paid special attention to increasing rear space, especially the headroom.

DRIVE IMPRESSIONS:

THE styling may be evolutionary - albeit pleasingly so - but the changes Audi has wrought under the skin of the A8 are far more significant.

This is a very solid, very tied down limousine, as capable of sprinting as it is to stroll. The adjustable damper settings definitely work, and their names are apt.

On comfort the ride is relaxed without being boulevard soft, yet there is still a hint of rock and roll from the big body and excellent bump absorption - although it must be said the German country roads we tested the A8 on were smoother than virtually anything encountered in Australia.

It must also be pointed out that the cars we drove were on 17-inch wheels, while Australian A8s will all come with lower-profile 18-inch wheels/tyres (and possibly 19s). Audi's suspension engineers say the car becomes that much more focussed with the sportier rubber.

On dynamic setting the whole act tightens up a few notches as the ride height drops 20mm, the spring rates increase and the dampers stiffen up. The ride is that much firmer but still well contained and there's noticeably less bodyroll.

If you can't be bothered worrying about all this, just select automatic and let the car decide what the suspension should be doing.

All this is underpinned by an excellent ESP system, which can save the ham-fisted from the direst of situations. We know, we tried to unsettle it on a water-logged Audi test track and failed. The only downer is that while the ESP is switchable, it automatically re-engages when you brake.

The road speed-sensitive electronic steering cannot quite back the chassis package up. It points well enough and its adjustable ratios make low-speed manoeuvring a breeze, but there is not quite the feel or accuracy of a BMW 7 Series as speeds rise, although our suspicion is the Audi is the better ride.

The fact that the Audi steering is contending with the additional complication of engine power and torque because of the quattro chassis is no doubt a contributor here - a little precision traded off for some shielding from steering wheel tug.

The engines are lovely units, both well and truly capable of hitting their speed limiters. In fact, Audi engineers estimate the 4.2 would run on towards 290km/h unrestricted and the 3.7 somewhere between 270 and 280km/h.

The engines are a little high strung, giving of their best as the revs rise into the middle ranges and beyond, a finely tuned V8 beat intruding pleasantly into the cabin. At lower revs you can't even hear the engines, the car is superbly quiet at quite silly autobahn speeds with wind rush the most noticeable intrusion, along with a little tyre bump-thump.

The engines are mated to an all-wheel drive version of the marvellous ZF six-speed automatic transmission that already graces the 7 Series and Jaguar's S-Type. And our admiration for it remains as high in this guise.

Although there is a semi-manual mode, it is really only required for the most determined and challenging driving as the auto mates the meat of the torque range to the right ratio almost seamlessly.

There are two ways of shifting manually, via the gearshift or F1-style paddles on the steering wheel. The gearshift works better because you can lose the paddles when serious wheel twirling starts.

The brake set-up is powerful enough, but too grabby, while the electronic throttle responds well from a standing start but seems to have a delay in response when pressed further from partial throttle.

Inside there is further evidence of Audi's commitment to quality. The instrumentation is elegantly and simply presented in separate deep-set dials sitting within a deep pod and MMI is certainly easier and more intuitive to use than BMW's iDrive. Its screen sits behind a little tilt-a-door at the top of the vertical centre console and is available at the press of a button.

It is noticable how deep you sit in the A8, a result of quite high window sills and the high transmission tunnel. The seats are like armchairs front and back with plenty of sprawling space, and the boot is huge.

The cabin abounds with neat touches, like the flip-out door pockets, elasticised hard-shell seat-back pockets, the machined-look air vents and the rollers for stereo tuning on the steering wheel.

We did battle to work the sat-nav system (a few others had the same drama) and the positioning of the 10-CD stacker in the glovebox came across as an afterthought when so many other aspects of the interior are ergonomically sound.

But overall we are impressed with the A8.

It's another thoroughly engineered, stylishly understated quality product from Ingolstadt.

Whether it is enough to gain Audi a sales breakthrough against the avantgarde 7 Series and top selling S-class is yet to be seen, but it certainly deserves to do better than its predecessor - here and overseas.