Hi, today we have article is a review of a car I really, really want to take for a test drive! Click the headline for more pictures and video of the car.
The Better to Eat You With, Luxury Rivals
By DAN NEIL
NOVEMBER 6, 2010 wsj.com
Like its classmates in the six-figure mega-sedan category, the new Audi A8L is a smart and powerful machine, a metallic being innervated by staggering amounts of computer coding. To do full justice to the technology would require an exertion of geekiness you could not bear to read, nor I to write.
So let's approach this car another way: From the front, at about 30 meters. Everything essential about this car is summed up in the face of the thing. Consider that, as a percentage of total frontal area, the grille is probably the largest of any car since the Rolls-Royce Phantom. This audacious trapezoid is not simply an aperture for getting cooling air to the radiators—it's a maw. This thing looks like it's ready to filter-feed on Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Jaguars like so much krill. This is the Audi brand in the full sway of its own success, the flagship as frigate, firing at the turn.
Likewise, the powerful and distinctive LED headlamps (optional), which make the car recognizable practically from orbit. Headlight optics is a dense and complicated discipline, but is it a mere coincidence that these angled shapes look like toppled 7's, as in BMWs? Meanwhile, these instruments create a virtual line across the front of the car, right at the level of the four-ring logo and, combined with the strakes of brightwork in the grille and brake ducts, the effect is to broaden, to exaggerate the horizontality of the car. The width of the A8 hardly bears exaggeration since it's 83.1 inches from mirror to mirror. It all adds up to a kind of lordly presumption, a glorious hog of the road.
I'm not saying it's beautiful. Actually, the front of this car tiptoes up to the ridiculous. If you want a beautiful luxury sedan, you have to get the Jaguar XJ. But it's fascinating to me how the insurgency of Audi—once the sick man of German luxury brands, now the standard against which all others are measured—has manifested itself in a kind of gleeful arrogance in design.
So much for physiognomy, interpreting the face of the car. But let's swing around to the back. What does that tell us? Ah, well, here you see the A8L, and by extension the Audi brand, is still a work in progress. The LED taillamp assemblies are decently distinctive, but overall, the back of the car isn't nearly as finished, as confident, as the front. Note that the tailpipes (the stingers, we call them back home) emerge from rudimentary cutouts in the bumper cover, as compared with the finished outlets of, say, a Cadillac CTS-V. Any car designer will tell you the back of a car sends a brand message as much as the front. This is, after all, the visual statement left when the car is seen from behind. Does it say, "Pass me," or, "You've just been passed"? The A8L seems to code the former.
Lest you think I make too much of the rear end, note that the ancient Greeks apparently practiced a kind of phrenology of the keister, considering it the key to health and fidelity. I think we can all see the wisdom in that.
And speaking of arcane personality tests, the Audi is the only car on the block skilled in graphology. New for 2011 is a touchpad built into the center console that is able to "read" your handwriting, so that you can enter navigation destinations and phone numbers by scribing them with your finger. It's but one of dozens of tech amenities available as standards and options with the A8 (standard wheelbase, 117.8 inches) and A8L (122.9). For example, our test A8L was equipped with the Executive Rear Seating Package, which includes dual heated/cooled reclining rear seats with a fixed leather console between, where the climate controls and the refrigerator live. The seating position behind the passenger seat is the dominant capitalist predator position, with its own fixed foot rest. This package also tosses in two 10-inch LCD screens and a DVD player.
Maybe you'd like a panoramic sunroof? Maybe a solar-panel sunroof that powers a recirculating fan to cool off the cabin while the car is parked? Double-laminated acoustic/security glass? Tick that box. Nineteen-speaker Bang & Olufsen audio system? Tick.
And yet, the landslide of gear that can come through the windows of this car is not what impresses me. Nor is it the eight-speed automatic transmission, which seems to use Moët & Chandon in the torque converter. Nor is it the all-wheel-drive system with a torque-vectoring rear differential (a new option this year), which actually over-rotates the outside rear wheel in corners, helping to turn the car and nulling out understeer (cf, Ferrari's E-Diff). And it's not the Driver Select system, which is essentially a dial-a-sport-sedan feature, gradually quickening the impulses and musculature of the transmission, throttle, steering and suspension. Turn the dials just so and this car becomes a big, angry German, with really respectable lateral grip, precise steering and beautiful balance. The revised rear diff allows you to get on the gas earlier and harder as you unwind the wheel coming out of corners, and the stability control allows a fair degree of power-oversteer. The A8L isn't the fastest car in its class—the direct-injected 4.2-liter V8 generates a relatively moderate 372 hp and 328 pound-feet of torque, propelling the car to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds—but its handling really helps you preserve momentum. On a coursing country road, the Audi's headlights set the woods ablaze and the slipstream fans the flames. Again, very respectable, but expected.
And I can't say I'm surprised by now that Audi can bake all this into a fully complementary and holistically wonderful sedan, lushly quiet and supple, elegant as an Audemars Piguet watch, as stout-feeling as a Russian kettle bell. After all, this had better be a fantastic car. Look what it's up against: Mercedes S-class and BMW 7-series. At the moment, Germany is to car-building what Renaissance Florence was to painting.
No, the wonder is that Audi can put the kitchen-sink collection of hardware on four wheels and still have the Audi A8L come in under 4,500 pounds. That, ladies and gentleman, is a magic trick that David Copperfield on his best day couldn't touch. Talk about making an elephant disappear. You can thank the Audi's aluminum chassis for defraying the weight of all the extra content, and what must have been a merciless night-and-day hunt for excess grams on the part of the development engineers. As a consequence, the A8L gets pretty amazing fuel economy: 17/27 mpg, city/highway, which the company is delighted to point out is better than the Mercedes S400 Hybrid and the BMW 7-series ActiveHybrid.
Perfect? Not really. The gearshift is fretful, requiring a concerted effort to shift from park into reverse and not drive (how many front bumpers and splitters will be sacrificed before Audi redesigns this gadget?). The LCD screen emerging out of the dash looks woefully aftermarket. Compared with the front end, the fuselage of the car is understated to the point of muteness.
And then there's that rear end, which I read as a slight tentativeness, still the echo of less sure times for Audi. Remember the wisdom of the ancients: The butt is the window to the soul.
2011 Audi A8L
Base price: $84,000
Price as tested: $112,700 (est.)
Powertrain: Direct-injected 4.2-liter DOHC, 32-valve V8 with variable valve timing and intake geometry; eight-speed adaptive automatic transmission with paddle shifters; full-time all-wheel drive with torque-sensing center differential, electronically locking front differential and locking/torque-vectoring rear differential (optional with sport package)
Horsepower/torque: 372 hp at 6,800 rpm; 328 pound-feet at 3,500 rpm
Length/weight: 207.4 inches/4,500 pounds (est.)
0-60 mph: 5.8 seconds
EPA fuel economy: 17/27 mpg, city/highway (premium required)
Cargo capacity: 13.2 cubic feet
