Audi A8 50 TDI Quattro review: It’s the business

Just want somewhere nice to sit after a hard day being a boss? This will do. No one who buys a vehicle like this is interested in cars.

The Audi A8 50 TDI Quattro: No one who buys a vehicle of this type is that interested in cars.

Is there anything on God’s green earth quite so drool-inducingly dreary as leasing? James May recently visited an exhibition on plywood and I think that’s up there. So is Jane Austen. And so are the BBC’s regional news programs. But leasing? That’s in a class of its own.

I spoke the other day to a man who leased his new car. He was explaining how he doesn’t have to pay for new tyres and how it’s an unlimited-mileage deal and when I woke up several hours later he was still telling me how he simply hands his car in one day and gets another. When I asked him what car it was, he didn’t even know.

When you take delivery of a new car that you’ve saved to buy and dreamt about, there is such a joyous sense of occasion. Choosing the first track you’ll play on its stereo. Being careful not to use too many revs for the first few miles. Setting up the interior so it’s how you like it. Having a sneaky over-the-shoulder glance after you’ve parked. Leasing a car? It’d be like leasing a dog.

That said, I wonder what would happen if I needed to buy a large executive saloon. A captain-of-industry barge. A Mercedes S-Class or the like. The trouble with cars such as this is that the only people who can afford to run them can certainly afford to buy one new. Nobody wants to buy such a large, thirsty and complicated car second-hand; the risks of an expensive out-of-warranty failure are too great. These cars depreciate like a grandfather clock that’s been pushed from the back of a Hercules transport plane. You could lose maybe $90,000 a year, and being from Yorkshire that would cause me physical pain.

The only sensible solution – apart from buying a smaller car – is to lease. To let the company that made the damn thing take the financial pain. I’m told there are some very tasty deals around. Friends talk about how they’ve leased a BMW 7-series for five cents a year and how Jaguar is now giving away XJs with packets of breakfast cereal. If that’s all you’re interested in, go ahead and choose the cheapest deal. The car you end up with will be big and comfy and full of animal skins, and you’ll be fine. However, what if you see the car as something more than an irritant in the profit-and-loss account? What if you love the smell of high-octane petrol in the morning? What if you’re all of that and you’re forced by social niceties to have a boss-mobile?

That brings us neatly to the Audi A8. I had been told by May that this was the new benchmark in comfort, that the pitter-patter and jiggliness of Audis past had been banished and replaced with a creamy brilliance. He’s wrong. It’s quite comfy in the front but in the back it’s far too crashy, especially over potholes and those speed humps that look like rubber but aren’t. That said, it’s a bloody nice place to sit. In the back you can have an optional iPad-style display on which you can choose the colour of the interior lighting and so on, while in the front you have a virtually all-glass dashboard. There are almost no buttons at all. It’s all touchscreen stuff and if you like that, it works very well. I don’t like it. The screen gets covered in fingerprints and in bright sunlight you can’t see a thing. So you have to keep a duster or a chamois in the door pocket. Which marks you out as a dullard.

To drive. Well, what can I say? It’s quiet and refined. The model I tested produced 210kW and the price includes half a tank of fuel. Audi doesn’t give you a whole tank because it’s massive. Filling it would cost about a million dollars, but on the upside, you can go more than 1000km between pumps.

That’s one USP. Another is the four-wheel-drive system. Most of the time you don’t need it, in the same way that most of the time you don’t need insurance for fire damage. But then the day arrives when you do. Big rear-wheel-drive cars are hopeless when the weather’s bad. The Audi isn’t. It’s well made, and with its enormous new shiny mouth it’s striking, too. I’ve always said that if I were in the market for a big business bruiser, I’d have the BMW 7 Series, but I think this Audi has it beat.

I appreciate that you will pick whichever car comes with the best leasing deal. I still maintain, though, that no one who buys a vehicle of this type is that interested in cars. It’d be like going on a cruise liner because you enjoy sailing. If you do enjoy driving and you want a big car, get a BMW 530d. If you just want somewhere nice to sit after a hard day in the office, the Audi’s fine.

Audi A8 50 TDI Quattro

Engine: 3.0-litre turbocharged V6 diesel (210kW/600Nm).

Average fuel: 5.6 litres per 100km

Transmission: Eight-speed automatic, all-wheel drive

Price: TBA; on sale mid-2018