2025 Audi RS Q8 performance | UK Review

The 640hp Q8 is still a lap record holder at the 'ring - how does that translate to Oxfordshire?

It’s been nearly a year since we drove the ‘performance’ variant of the latest Audi RS Q8 abroad. As with most of its top-tier models, Audi Sport hardly needed to specify what the uprated 640hp variant was all about, though it can be forgiven for inserting its favourite word into the title - after all, this is the most powerful series production car in its history. Or at any rate, the most powerful one that doesn’t require a lithium-ion battery the size of a small patio.

As John H reflected at the time, this guarantees three things. One, that the flagship’s reliance on a turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 alone for its output made it seem increasingly like an anomaly; two, that avoidance of hybrid tech made it handily cheaper and lighter than many of its rivals; three, somewhat predictably given points one and two, it was very easy to appreciate. Not unlike the Aston Martin DBX S we drove earlier this month, the RS Q8, via a new sports exhaust, is acutely aware of why you might find it interesting. The V8 is less dog whistle and more foghorn.

Of course, the interesting thing about the intervening months is the extent to which the luxury market has come around to the RS Q8’s way of thinking. We’ll not dwell on the gathering pace of the industry’s U-turn, because it obviously encapsulates many issues that are unconnected to the raucous noise a V8 makes - but for those of us who cherish combustion for its own sake, the immediate future is certainly less bleak than it once was. If anecdotal response to the RS is anything to go by, the medium-term survival of large petrol engines will be fully endorsed by the Great British public; rarely have so many strangers enquired about the sound coming from what appears to be a school run SUV.

Perhaps that’s underselling the check-me-out-bruv presence of forged 23-inch alloys (standard with Carbon Black trim), but were it not for the pearl effect Sepang blue paint finish (a £5,750 option), you might reasonably mistake the RS for a lowlier Q8. Not everyone, after all, notices a honeycomb grille. Even facelifted, the RS has none of the chutzpah of a Lamborghini Urus, nor the pointier cohesiveness of a Porsche Cayenne, two of the upmarket SUVs that share its MLB Evo platform and much else besides. Nevertheless, there is no mistaking the level of RS-style intent when you fire the thing up in a Premier Inn car park.

Underway, it more than lives up the movie trailer. It could hardly fail to: this is the same 640hp/627lb ft unit that helped turn the original Cayenne Turbo GT into a greased-up whippet. The V8’s torque is so lavishly abundant that you could spend a lifetime merely brushing the throttle and still be in no doubt that the car is amply fulfilling its ‘performance’ billing. But you won’t. Audi suggested at launch that it had removed some sound insulation to better channel V8 hullabaloo into the cabin, which is like handing a loudhailer to a siren. The opportunities to dash your driving licence on the rocks beyond the national speed limit are endless.

The RS is aided in this regard by a) the increasingly familiar amount of mass-defying tech that has been shoehorned into its undersides, and b) Audi Sport’s generally laudable notion of where the compromise between ride and handling should be. As you might expect, vast wheels, no matter their modest advantage in unsprung mass, do the car no favours in terms of subtlety - the Q8 doesn’t ebb and flow with a B road like the DBX - yet the sense that its air springs and adaptive dampers and 48-volt anti-roll system are actively working to nullify intrusions so you can drive over them more quickly is palpable.

From memory, the pre-facelift, lower-powered RS felt slightly more comfort-orientated than the new range-topper, although that’s hardly a revelation when you consider the Nordschleife lap time the performance is capable of - it remains top of the SUV leaderboard 18 months later. The outright composure and directional stability that achievement implies are present in bulk, much like its sledgehammer delivery, but it doesn’t entirely rob the Q8 of a playful side, nor the everyday usability you ultimately want from a large family car. The sense of iron-willed sombreness that weighed heavily on the Turbo GT is hardly felt in the closely related RS, which is quite something when you consider that’s the car it knocked into second place.

Certainly the Q8 remains an easy car to rub along with, and still a very nice place to sit. The wider update seems to have barely scratched the interior, save to clad yet more surfaces in either Alcantara or Dinamica microfibre. Somewhat inevitably for a model approaching the end of its life cycle, the basic layout, with its stacked, dash-integrated touchscreens, seems a mite dated - though this is probably a blessing: we’ll take a dedicated climate control display and clickable steering wheel switchgear over most newer, flashier alternatives any day of the week. Aside from the lack of a mappable * button to assign the tedious speed limit warning bong to, the Q8’s spacious, well-appointed cabin offers precious little to gripe about.

This inkling, that Audi has improved the RS by mostly leaving it alone, is obviously a running theme. Would the car be better in the UK if it had a derivative of the hybrid powertrain now installed in the Urus SE or Turbo E-Hybrid GT? No - it would be heavier, quieter and costlier, and therefore diminished in character. As it happens, the performance is still subjectively inferior to the much plusher Bentley Bentayga Speed (another car that still shares the unfettered V8). But that’s fine - Crewe’s heavyweight will cost you at least £50k more before you get near an option list. That hardly qualifies the six-figure RS as a bargain, though its objective superiority to any current Cayenne says much about what Audi Sport has got right here.

SPECIFICATION | Audi RS Q8 performance Carbon Black

Engine: 3996cc V8, twin-turbo
Transmission: Eight-speed auto, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 640 @ 6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 627 @ 2,300-4,500rpm
0-62mph: 3.6 seconds
Top speed: 174mph
Weight: 2,275kg (unladen)
CO2: 302g/km
MPG: 21.3
Price: £154,690 (as tested, £162,290)

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