My business partner's borrowed a new A8 4.2 with Sport suspension from the dealer for a few days and today we had a little play on the back roads in the rain. Very interesting, but bear in mind that he knows these particular roads better than I do as they are off my regular commute route.

First off, the RS 6 will outright blow away the A8 at taking off suddenly - over a car-length at 60mph and just keeps increasing from there. All as expected.

The RS 6 also keeps flatter and taughter through long sweeping bends thanks to DRC. The A8 feels floatier and more detached from the road due to it's (initially) light steering and air suspension.

The RS 6 does suffer a bit from nose-heavyness and the understeer it induces in tighter corners (but I already told you this before). It's possible to throw the RS 6 into a corner and get some understeer, lift off the gas long enough to throw in some oversteer and then nail the gas again and point in the right direction. Well, in the dry you can anyway. In the wet, the ESP grumbles and complains and throttles back, leaving you waiting briefly for boost to return before you can howl off into the distance. Turn the ESP off in the wet and you're a brave soul - unlike previous Audis, on this one off means really off. The RS 6 will not help you save yourself from ditches if you ask it not to, it has no overriding teutonic morals.

The A8 is very well balanced. Handling is impressive for a big car (but I already told you this before). It's not as tight as the RS 6 in wide sweepers (even in Dynamic mode), but it's nimble enough and the air suspension has an uncanny knack of reigning in the big-bodied car through corners just enough to let you hear tyres protesting slightly, but no ESP light shows up unless you're really asking a lot of it. Even then, the ESP interrupts briefly and the car remains stable, meaning that once ESP cuts out, if you are in the right gear you can apply power and move on smoothly. In fact, with some practice it's almost possible to override your brain's urgent warnings about the speed you are approaching corners and the size of the car you are approaching them in. Almost. If you can do it though, the A8 is eager to prove that logic was right and instinct is a bad judge of physics.

Talking of corners and approach speeds, the A8 is slightly lighter than the RS 6. Or, if it's not (with the options etc) then it certainly feels it. Having a lighter engine up front, mounted more over the front axle in the bigger engine bay helps a lot, and the A8 understeers less than the RS 6 does in tight, slow corners. That reduced nose weight helps to distribute braking loads too, and the A8 slows from insane to just slightly daft in a worryingly short space of tarmac, and without the understeer-inducing nose loading that the RS 6 has with the front brakes doing most of the work.

So, what does all thise mean in practice? The RS 6 pulls away and gains an immediate lead. The first tight bend comes up and the A8 can brake later and harder into the entry and carries more speed into the corner. It's wet, so both cars ESP circuits kick in. The A8 is closing the gap, at least until the RS 6 spools back up and roars off again. A couple more tight bends and the A8 is back behind the RS 6 again. One long straight and three switching long sweepers soon sort that out, but then comes a double S bend with very short straights between bends. <b>The A8 has to throttle back to avoid ramming the RS 6!</b> Then the RS 6 pulls away again on the straight, and once more the A8 catches up through a sucession of bends.

The end result is rather a draw, with neither car able to gain more than short-term advantage over the other. Not what I expected, nor was what we found when we stopped.

The RS 6's brakes were pinging, creaking and smoking, and the car's cooling fans were blowing full tilt, causing big plumes of heated air to be ejected from the wheel arches. The A8 sat purring to itself, and could only really be heard above the RS 6 by putting an ear to the A8's wheel arch.

The brakes on the RS 6 also felt decidedly spongy until they cooled down, and the tyre pressure monitor decided it would misbehave by interpreting a 5psi rise in pressure due to temperature as a portent of impending doom. Only a few minutes gentle driving to bring some cooling air flow through the wheel arch vents created some relief. The A8 trundled along behind with a big smile on it's broad face.

Umm. That's kind of embarrasing for the RS 6, isn't it? OK, it could be my driving on this road isn't as good as my business partner's, so we swap cars. This time round he makes headway and manages to keep it, but I'm unfamiliar with the A8 having never driven one on back roads like this, and he's got a very good knowledge of the road.

When we stop, he happily tells me that he was "giving it maximum horsepower" and the ESP light was flashing almost continually on the wet road. That makes me feel a little better, but I couldn't help but notice that the RS 6 was running very wide on tight corners, and the A8 may have produced some tyre roar in the same corners as it felt about for traction, but it certainly felt like it was holding the intended line better. The RS 6 required some deft extra spin on the steering wheel to counter it's overtseering tendencies.

I'd summarise by saying that although the RS 6 is by far a faster car than the A8, the A8's handling is far easier to get to grips with on unfamiliar or difficult roads. On familiar roads where the limits of the RS 6 are already known by the driver, it's a devastating road weapon. Just don't race A8s through tight country back roads, especially if it's wet. That A8 really is a sleeper in the handling department.

Do I want to change the RS 6 for an A8? Yes and no. Yes, because the A8 is beautiful and full of technology. No, because the RS 6 is a power-house and looks and sounds it too. I should be having the A8 for a few days to drive my regular routes in it fairly soon. I'll tell you then if it's any clearer.

 

... and the weight should be close to a draw (if not slightly in favor of the A8. But it shocks me that the A8 would better the RS6 in the curves. Maybe that's why they're only bringing 1,100 over the pond!

 

What more can I say? That's how it happened, I'm just reporting the facts!

Anyway, I'll have to repeat the experiment on some roads that I'm more familiar with some time and see if that changes things! ;-)

 

toward the '05/'06 S8.

Seriously, a great part of my enjoyment of CAR magazine comes from reading the long articles vs. the clinical and poorly written American rags...

Thank you very much for the notes, please keep on updating us - much appreciated!

 

Didn't want to put out that kind of cash, but drove it anyway. I know that there is a big difference in power, 250 - 360 hp, but the most significant difference I noticed was how perfectly neutral the S8 was going through corners. The stock A6 suspension plows like a pig, while the S8 suspension allowed me to induce under or oversteer at will. It felt like a smaller car than the A6. As for the RS6, I'm sure that all that hp doesn't help if you are already understeering your way through a corner...

 

the '04 A8 might outperform the '03 S8, but this surprised even me.

Thanks for the write-up.<ul><li><a href="https://forums.audiworld.com/a8/msgs/10843.phtml">'04 A8 versus '03 S8</a></li></ul>

 

Check your email - have a quick question, would like to talk.

 

I'm sure that can be used on a WW post on OT.
=ERT=

 

What tires did each car have?

 

It's the British version, it has tyres...