Audi S8: Driven by TopGear!

UK's TopGear took the Audi S8 out for a ride!

Autobahn sign-posted Austria, Franz Ferdinand on the Bang & Olufsen, Germany's snow-swept winter hinterland blurring past as the latest evolution of Audi's continent-crushing S8 creeps towards its limiter; the subtexts are too numerous and confusing to deal with at any speed, let alone this one.

Easier to distil from this guilty mix of messages is the strong possibility that this new S8 is the zenith of Aryan engineering, so clear cut in its purpose and accomplished in its execution that it might actually be all the car you'll ever need.

Even allowing for the creep of the auto from a standstill, there's so much immediate grunt from upfront that it's tricky to pull away without snapping your head back - another thing that's only going to delight your chauffeur while you bite back the need to shotblast the upholstery with your scarcely digested power lunch.

With 90 per cent of torque allegedly available at just 2,300rpm, on the open road the S8 shows even less hesitation. Ripping through a six-speed Tiptronic auto, acceleration is seamlessly yet shamelessly aggressive.

Select Sport mode and the upshifts happen later, at higher revs, and the engine bellows in ball-shrinking fashion as all four driven wheels tear at the tarmac.

The root of this dizzying thrust is not just the 5.2-litre V10 engine from a Lamborghini Gallardo, but a development of it. Audi has taken its engine back from the Italians - fair enough really - and popped in the latest FSI technology that has seen gruelling development in the tiresomely dominant R8 Le Mans cars.

So that's supercar powerplant meets racecar tech, dropped into a pretty inconspicuous saloon car. The result is 450bhp, a bit less than the Lambo, but 398lb ft of torque, which is actually a bit more.