K?@J >@8EK @J KILCP 9I@CC@8EK
SO much for loyalty cards, club cards and Nectar points… this week it’s been Asda for me.
Want to know why? Because my local branch has got a proper car park, with spaces big enough for any vehicle.
And last week I didn’t just have “any vehicle”, I had a giant-sized portion of Audi in the shape of the new Q8.
I have to admit that, when it was delivered, leaving a 2,230kg bomb crater on The Sumptuous Drive That Leads To Fowler Towers, I was so revolted by its anti-social size I rang Audi to tell them to take it back and replace it with a normal car that wouldn’t turn the leaves brown and stop the birds from breathing.
Scary
In fact, I found out from the call that the
Q8, at 16ft 4ins long, is half an inch shorter than its predecessor the Audi Q7 while its
6ft 5in width is the same. So what gave me the impression that it was bigger?
Simple, it’s the car’s imposing high-up, in yer face, swept back and scary design. It may be vast but it’s like comparing a steam engine to a bullet train. Like it or loathe it, there’s no doubt that the Q8 is an impressive looking machine.
As far as gargantuan cars are concerned, you are probably well aware that I’m not a fan, but if you ignore its selfish, road-ruling how dare you drive on my street, width you can’t help but be impressed by it. My (thank God it wasn’t) Q8 should have cost £66,935, but by the time Audi had emptied what must have been the entire extras bin on to it, the final bill was £85,565.
That included things like the Extra Leather Pack (£2,500), Super Sports Seats (£2,250), Four-Wheel-Steer (£1,950), 22-inch Black Design alloys (£1,750), Annoying and Interfering Head-up Display (£1,450), Bang and Olufsen Premium sound (£1,150) and a shock “Dragon Orange” paint job (£750), which I totally adored.
Even without any of these changes the interior would still look good on a space ship, never mind a car. Its 5ft wide front facia mix of silver and piano black, which incorporated a 3ft wide multi-coloured dashboard, is spectacular.
I spent the first five minutes sitting in the car trying to open what I thought was a black, flip-top, odds and ends tray only to discover, when I started the engine and it lit up like a Christmas tree, that it was a display for any choice of devices.
The amount of kit available on the Q8 is staggering. At first it is confusing and ended with me taking an embarrassing trip to an Audi dealer where a 25-year-old girl made me feel like an ancient idiot for being so stupid not to have the wit to work it all out. In fact, it’s simple and brilliant.
To drive, it is astonishingly swift and silent. It barely feels as if it’s moving at 70mph with the engine turning over at a mere 2,400rpm, yet it’s quick, too, if you can be bothered to floor the accelerator in such a luxurious mixture of state of the art and elegance. Do so, though, and 0-62mph comes up in just 6.3s, not bad for a truck on its way to a top speed of 152mph.
Bully
The Q8 is shockingly shy of filling stations, too. At a steady 80mph (on the autobahn of course, officer) the Q8 returned a highly respectable 34mpg which, considering it’s like driving a house, is excellent. Overall, I was more than impressed with the Q8 even if, in reality, it has no place on UK roads where it’s an adult bully in a class of schoolchildren. It would be far more at home in America or in a city where roads are famously large and full of sports cars. That will be Kuwait. Geddit?