Audi RS Q8 Performance 2025: Australian first drive

Let’s not bury the lede: the single most impressive and surprising aspect of the newly facelifted Audi RS Q8 Performance is not its lengthy list of go-fast credentials, but that it’s such a pleasant thing to drive and live with (with one caveat) despite its excesses.

Put simply, being a fine daily driver is the only thing Audi’s most-bonkers combustion model needs to accomplish. Because everything else about it, particularly this most potent Performance variant debuting current-gen RS Q8’s midlife update, is an indulgent want.

And because, for fair or foul, Audi Sport Gmbh decided that the most powerful combustion vehicle it’s yet unleashed on the road, bringing with all sorts of high-performance promise, is a large luxury-infused family-hauling SUV.

This is no new concept for the Ingolstadt concern – as we pointed out four years when RS Q8 launched, Audi Sport once pedalled a 1000Nm diesel V12-powered Q7 in the height of the skunkwork’s radical oiler Le Mans racing campaign. But with this latest take, it seems Audi’s ‘bonkers SUV’ concept keeps getting smarter, quicker, more excessive and even less sensical.

So, credentials wise, where does Audi (Sport) stake its ICE claim in 2025? It starts by drowning out the deathknell for internal combustion’s demise with a howling and familiar 4.0-litre biturbo V8 – no electric augmentation required – to a tune of 471kW – yes, 630-plus horsepower – and 850Nm.

Of course, that’s a magnitude more than one needs for school runs or taking Fido for walkies down the park. But if you want to hit 0-100km/h in 3.6 seconds or lap the Nurburgring Nordschleife in 7min 36sec-ish – two-tenths and six seconds quicker, respectively, than old RS Q8 benchmarks – then this facelift has you covered, says Audi.

The price of admission is also heady: $255,800 before on-roads, options and a very healthy budget allowance for fuel and tyres. But a fair chunk of that investment also goes into a very long list of technical support systems aimed at massaging a semblance of family-friendly Hyde out of what’s potentially one very unhinged Jekyll.

Like brakes. At 440mm, the ten-piston front anchor’s ceramic discs are, says Audi, the world’s largest for a production car, here wisely as standard (when they were once a $20K option) for a rig weighing 2350kg. Sheer disc girth necessitates whopping 23-inch wheels, forged and five kilos per rim lighter than the old models’ 22s.

There’s a lot more. Adaptive air suspension ‘Sport’ tackles the formidable bump and rebound duties, while a familiar chestnut in the 48-volt electromechanical roll stabilisation system contends with the RS Q8’s considerable cornering inertia in the heat of the mid-corner moment.

Post eight-speed auto, quattro drive is split 40 percent front and 60 rear, the latter via a tricky rear axle differential. Further enhancing the RS Q8’s cornering chop is all-wheel steering, reducing the turning circle by a full metre at low speed with countersteer, while acting complimentary beyond 80km/h for high-speed stability.

Plenty of party tricks, then, though not much is new. Added biturbo stonk demanded lots of calibration polishing, though outside of a broader mild-to-wild stagger in the drive mode selection, innovation is slim. Again, there’s not even the mildest hybridisation or electric drive assistance here in this red meat-chomping behemoth.

The facelift updates are predictable: a new singleframe front fascia, revised rear bar, and some digital front DLRs and an OLED rear array from a brand renowned for lighting trickery. New rim designs (in a choice of three finishes) and paint choices – Shakir Gold, Ascari Blue, Chilli Red – complete the exterior midlife makeover.

Inside, there’s a choice of five revised Design Package Plus ‘themes’, mostly a choice of highlight colour for the lushy diamond stitched Valcona leather seats. Some trim decor is revised and the Performance version of RS Q8 gets bespoke Virtual Cockpit content.

Otherwise it’s carryover stuff, slightly old-school compared with some of Audi’s newer E-Tron offerings if not a fault, the cabin exuding richness and familiarity. Materials are varied and nicely sombre – the console, dash and door touch points are all beautifully stitched nappa leather – though the RS Q8 neatly sidesteps the gaudiness flaunted inside some big-buck luxo SUVs.

It’s as amply roomy and airy as you rightly expect in such a large rig, though the seating and ergonomics still bring a strong whiff of oh-so-RennSport sportiness and purpose. The seats are as supportive as they are seemingly infinitely adjustable, with ample bolstering for the heat of the battle yet leisurely enough for genuine long-haul comfort.

It’s feature laden. The dual stacked 10.1-inch media and 8.6-inch ‘control’ screens remain, with acoustic and haptic feedback, though the MMI media format looks five years old in this era of fast-moving in-cabin tech.

The dignified luxury effect continues through to row two, where accommodation is roomy if not cavernous, as comfy as a well worn Chesterfield lounge and decked out with an expected array of multi-zone climate adjustment and device power. It’s a nice place to be for long family road trips. Boot space is decent 605 litres.

Our tester demands an added $2300 for ‘Matt Carbon twill’ inlays and your half-mil cleanskin version can rocket towards $300K quickly with options.

An RS Design Plus pack ($4100) is a bit of an Alcantara/Dinamica/stitching fluff up, the Sensory pack ($9700) swaps Bang & Olufsen’s 17-speaker 730-watt audio for more elaborate 23-speaker 1920w excess plus other tweaks, while there’s also a expanded Matt Carbon ($9800) exterior spruce up with results of questionable taste. To each their own.

The local launch of the RS Q8 in Queensland was punctuated by a stint at its famed Lakeside Park raceway, not for hot lapping but to demo the SUV bruiser’s acceleration chops on the main straight.

A stiff headwind and uphill run stifled a personal best, with a 3.9sec pass for the 0-100km/h sprint. But, jeez, the drama and theatre of that bent eight on full song, bellowing like an Olympic weightlifter and seeming defying physics, is very intoxicating.

But it’s really the aplomb of how the RS Q8 can tame its manner and contain itself on a leisurely cruise, its engine purring along like a Bengal tiger in an afternoon snooze, that is truly impressive.

Around town or on a motorway, it’s as polite and polished as any luxury SUV half its price, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. Bar the torquey undertow beneath the right foot – no peakiness, no histrionics – you very quickly forget you’re perched at the bring of ultra-performance that’s just a stomp of the right foot away.

In Comfort, it’s pliant and rounded enough in manner that you never feel like you’re reining its performance in or that tooling about in a commute demands any sort of driver restraint. The wheels patter across expansion joints a touch, but otherwise there’s little to suggest you’re in anything other than a luxo-tuned cruiser.

The ride from the air suspension is pliant and well judged, the steering is connected without feeling fizzy or urgent, and even the progression from those massive ceramic brakes feel utterly normal and pedestrian. It’s a placid beast when you want it to be.

Find some twisty backroads, in this case the Queensland hinterlands west of the Sunshine Coast, and the RS Q8 dials in an undertow of muscle and eases into the task of drumming pace. And there’s enough of it, paired with linear and instant response, to drum up a serious clip without having to reach for the drive mode selector.

It feels big, especially on tighter bits of hot-mix with no available run-off, but its various chassis systems do conspire together to reveal impressive dynamic talent. The RS Q8 is easy to hustle – if sometimes a tricky to judge, given its size – and it’ll point and shoot between apexes at a clip that nearly 2.4 tonnes of German metal really shouldn’t.

Having spent time in the old version in environments that allow for dynamic exploration, the RS Q8 can become reasonably playful once its broad 295mm-wide footprint cries freedom from the tarmac. And while I don’t doubt this face-lift is equally talented or better, the tight and lumpy Queensland mountain roads are not the place for proper exploration.

That hefty kerb weight makes for formidable lateral inertia that demands decent real estate to recover from. And while the RS Q8 does hang on like it’s on rails to a point, when the road gets slippery its heft, plus the abundance of energy this rig musters up, demands a measured approach at the helm.

Ditto urgent changes of direction, perhaps the trickiest request one can make from a plus-sized high-performer. Again, what the RS Q8 is capable of (in good, dry conditions) is nigh on miraculous, but Audi Sport’s most potent combustion model to date is far from its friskiest, or a genuine leader in driver engagement and fun factor. That’s physics for you.

But as a do-almost-anything allrounder, the RS Q8 is a hard act to pick holes in. And opting for the pricer, go-fast Performance variant doesn’t seem to impinge on what is a wonderfully resolved balance of sportiness, performance and luxury that it’s clearly out to achieve.

The RS Q8 offers an abundance of fury and frills, if one without the shouty ostentation of a Lamborghini Urus or a Bentley Bentayga or in price – both corporate cousins starting from around $400K and head well north for the spicier variants.

Price notwithstanding, the cut of the RS Q8’s jib alone will make it much more desirable to those after premium family hauling where outlay is of little object. As it ought to be given the V8’s heady thirst – its 12.2L/100km combined consumption is optimistic as best.

Servicing, though, is $4690 for a five-year plan and quite reasonable given the performance potential on offer.

At the time of review, Audi had just announced a regular RS Q8 will join the go-faster Performance in 2025 facelift form, the slightly more attainable and pragmatic 441kW/800Nm combination matching pre-facelift prowess (3.8sec 0-100km/h) at roughly a ten percent discount ($230,900).

Fair enough. That’s still an astonishingly big stick to swing for a plus-sized family truckster.

But for what’s saving a few shekels in adjustment in the lease payment, you’re essentially opting out of the status of the most powerful combustion vehicle Audi has ever devised…

We imagine most buyers will stump for the tree-topper. In for a penny, in for a pound, they’ll likely say…