Audi RS Q8 – ride and handling

Set off in the RS Q8’s more benign modes and you’ll be hard-pressed to tell this is Audi’s most aggressive and powerful SUV yet. The engine is very quiet, and even at low speeds, it’s compliant over Britain's broken tarmac in its softest setting. The light steering, soft throttle response and general ease of use only exaggerate this feeling, but prod some buttons (virtual or physical) and the RS Q8’s trick of transforming itself from family cruiser into something more violent comes to the fore.

Switching to Dynamic mode adds weight to the steering, tightens the damping, sharpens up the throttle and opens the V8’s exhaust flaps. But the RSQ8 is such a hardware-heavy car that the changes continue, as the rear-wheel steering, active anti-roll bars and even the air conditioning all optimise, too. 

The result? It does feel quantifiably more responsive and athletic than you’d expect of a 2.3-ton SUV. It feels dialled in and hooked up, eating up aggressive inputs and somehow digging in and finding purchase. There’s not much feel and the way the RS Q8 dissects a road can feel one-dimensional, but you can’t help but be impressed by what it can do. And on every straight, there’s 592bhp chomping through the prop shafts ready to launch you towards the next corner. 

Keep pushing harder into corners, start leaning on the 440mm (optional) carbon-ceramic brakes, turn in with more aggression, get greedy with the throttle; the RSQ8 just laps it all up. There are of course physical hardware elements like the rear-wheel steering and torque vectoring rear differential facilitating this, but you still never quite believe that a car of this size and weight is able to carry such speed through bends. 

A Porsche Cayenne GTS has more finesse to the way it steers and handles, but the RS Q8 is certainly more rounded and resolved than BMW’s X6 M, which is uncouth and overly firm on anything other than smooth roads. The Audi can pogo along on bumpy surfaces in its firmest mode, but you can dial back the damping to introduce more compliance and a touch of vertical float in the body at speed. 

On the whole, though, you wouldn’t call the RS Q8 fun, bemusing and impressive though it may be. The irony is that the RS Q8 is barely (or not at all) any more practical than the new RS6 Avant, which itself isn’t a lightweight considering it tops two tons, but feels every bit 300kg lighter, holds its weight closer to the ground and is genuinely entertaining.