Test drive Audi A8 D3 2003 - 2005 Sedan

Four rings six liters

We will tell you one editorial secret: the representative offices of foreign companies began to give cars too carefully for the test Nikolai Fomenko, fearing - and not without reason - that the editor -in -chief of the autopilot spoiled by sports equipment will be carried away by the role of an evil consumer and will not leave the screw on the screw from the next new product of the world auto industry. Audi also hesitated for a long time and were afraid to hear words that were not printed in advertising booklets addressed to their six hundred -hundred flagship. But a miracle happened: the evil consumer wrote an Audi A8 6.0 Quattro Odu.
Great eight. There should have been an advertisement at this place. Just advertising eight with a W12 engine with a volume of six liters. And all. My test drive in this case is a completely meaningless action. In general, any test drives of this car and reports about it are meaningless. Because there are cars about which you only need to know what they are. And all. And do not check how and what works for them there. Everything is clear with such cars from the very beginning to the very end.
Moreover, the person buying the Audi A8 6.0 Quattro is probably prepared for the fact of buying all previous experience of the happy possession of almost the same A8, but with another engine and other mother -of -pearl buttons. It is difficult to imagine a different situation: let's say, a citizen drove in a VAZ-2105 car or drove even at 2110, and then went and took A8 purely for every day. Well, maybe the story knows one such case, but he, he has no doubt, has a tragic denouement: the new owner could not move out and leave the salon - from the impressions incompatible with his Soviet consciousness, he received a heart attack and was hospitalized .
Audi A8 today is the most cool car in the representative class. No matter how disappointing it will sound for two more famous German manufacturers, but today it has no competitors. I say this is not because I myself have two Audi cars in the family - Allroad and A6. And not because I once traveled (for the Ingolstad account) on AudidrivingExpierence to rush in Finland on the bare ice behind the polar circle on all-wheel drive machines with a 3-liter engine. And not because my best friends are representatives of the Audi team of the Le Mans series, chasing the R-8 prototypes. Finally, not at all because I am associated with some kind of intimate relationship with the company's management. Do not connect. Just for the same, that this is really a fan-t-shi-car.
Skin-throat, all things. Of course, there is everything that can wish for all the good or even the best motorist. He only sat down, as he immediately helpfully - let us recall everyone by name - a column of control rolled under the white handles, and under the white ass - armchairs with forced ventilation. For the ventilation of the priests - special thanks. Both plus 30 and plus 40 degrees, let such it is difficult to imagine temperatures in the middle strip, it will never be wet and will never stick to expensive skin. Behind the word, the skin in the minds of the domestic motorist invariably stretches the corresponding rhyme - erysipelas.
Erysels in Audi A8 is, as you know, the MMI multimedia interface. And it is more than just an analogue of IDRive design, born of a gloomy Bavarian, but still a genius. By the way, all the conversations about the inconvenience of these joysticks (regardless of the brand) are nonsense. Enough a week or even less to get used to it in the same way as to the computer mouse.
MMI is the last IDRive, and this is already his advantage. In addition, the pedantic Germans from Ingolstadt studied all the flaws and mistakes of the pioneers - Germans from Munich. And for my taste, the Audi option turned out to be more understandable to the user. There is a joystick in the design of ae-drama, only a joystick and nothing but a joystick, which only fans of a computer game DOOM-2 can use without looking. In other words, on BMW you need to do everything with one joystick, switching, like transmission, one section of the menu to another. From the TV - on CD, from the phone - on the radio, etc. In Audi, the sections are included in one click of the button. So you wanted to get information about traffic in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Champs Elysees or Brandenburg Gate, pressed the button - and now it, this information, is in front of you. Then you can do anything with the joystick. You can even look, albeit without great success, fresh data about traffic jams on a garden ring. In short, in my opinion, the washer+buttons are more convenient for joystick+nothing.
The convenience of the buttons of the car factory - now a fashionable allocation of the vehicle’s sports is also a matter of personal taste. The same thing with Tiptronics petals under the steering column, as in Formula 1, as well as in Formula-2, 3 and 4. These things produce a phenomenal impression on people who are far from sports, and sin to fun over all this.
What else is wonderful in A8 is a dynamic suspension that has several provisions. It rises and sinks either at your request, or at its desire: the computer, considering the speed and calculating where this careless riding is going - along the pits or smooth paths, will give the appropriate command of Main or Vira.
ESP is another evidence of energetic and successful attempts by automakers to make the driver not one hundred percent answer for his life and the life of passengers. In combination with the QUATTRO ESP drive, fifty percent removes responsibility for his actions from the driver. What is noteworthy: this intellectual system in the Audi A8 Quattro is also particularly intelligent. That is, softness and tact.
If you are inexperienced and do not feel subtly, then you won’t even notice in which places it corrects you, returns to the desired trajectory, dumps the momentum, not allowing you to twist the engine. She constantly insures you, preventing you from flying away from the roadbed due to your mistakes. And even if these mistakes are absolutely idiotic, the system silently corrects them, and does not tell you: man, leave the car and give the steering wheel to someone who knows how to handle it better than you.
I remember that I once tested one very popular and sold car with us. I will not call his brand of three letters (by the way, I myself go every day on these three letters) and the number of his largest series. So this car then made a terrifying impression on me. I chased him in the snow and ice, trying to drive him into various traps, spur and released him - in a word, mocked over the technique ... It all ended that the car’s computer was three letters of the other three letters, turning off the engine. The performance ended. A8 does not allow such a educator zeal in relation to the driver.
I will not talk in detail about the reliability of this car. Cars of this class do not have the right to be unreliable. But the on -board computer Audi surprises with its Nordic resistance to sharp temperature differences - which is like electronics of death like. In any case, I did not encounter the problem of hovering the computer that is widespread in our country when changing a deep minus to a deep plus. The people around me, of which in other situations you can make nails, suddenly began to break, flu and come with snot. And the computer held on well done. Heroic design.
TWO IN ONE. A8 is twice a car. You can sit in the back seat of this mobile house (or office-who is closer) with your legs extended with your arms outstretched, bulging your eyes into a TV-DVD monitor and turning off your brain from any other external stimuli. Or you can give a day off to your driver, take the steering wheel in your own hands and, with geeks and shouts, try to jump on 450 not horses, no, but just on trotches. You understand that this house can be absolutely sports car Grand Tourism. By the way, on the speedometer of the eight it is written 280. And 280 km/h this car - I vouch - it goes. In my Avoska, in any case, there were no strainers of freedom that would not give her the opportunity to accelerate at such a speed.
I don’t know who the person should be so that he does not like this combination of comfort and agility. A8 is a GT limousine. So I would formulate the name of this automobile view. If you take separately such qualities of a machine as the comfort of planting, the wealth of the configuration, the thoroughness of the finish, then we, of course, will find a couple of superior competitors in the elite transport club, among the members of which are lions such as Bentley Arnage or Rolls-Royce Phantom. Clouded to the tongue over the indicator of the accelerated dynamics of the A8, we will not completely forget that some Ferrari Scaglietti has a noticeably smaller. But if we talk about the car as a whole - no one stands near A8.
 
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Audi A8 6.0 Quattro
 
Gasoline engine w12
Working volume (cubic cub) 5998
Power (L.S. at rpm) 450 at 6200
Moment (Nm at rpm) 580 at 4000-4700
The permanent drive is complete
Gearbox 6-speed automatic, Tiptronic
Length/width/height (mm) 5062/1894/1444
Wheel base (mm) 2944
Mass weight (kg) 1960
Maximum speed (km/h) 250
Acceleration to 100 km/h (c) 5.1
Fuel consumption (medium, l/100 km) 14.7
The cost of the tested car is $ 187,000

Author: if the elongated sedan has a light and even empty sedan, and the response to the gas pedal is sorted out, then the short Audi A8 W12 steel is more noticeable with reactive effort, and the engine control of the engine in sporting is touched to the gas pedal. The reactions of the machine during maneuvering are more accurate and sharper - the level of understanding with dynamic driving higher. In addition, both cars differ in the transfer numbers of the main transmission. A more stretched transmission of a long -drawn sedan contributes to the maximum comfort. And the standard car seems more aggressive, although the factory data of the acceleration dynamics almost do not differ.

Croxon: with a new 12-cylinder engine, Audi A8 entered a narrow circle of automobile super-elite. You cannot go to the most prestigious clubs in the world just like that, from the street. They will not even be allowed with a million in a pocket. It's not about wealth. Money in an elite club environment does not matter. Here are other rules, a system of guarantees and special passes ... In the arsenal of the advantages of a newly -member of the club, except for a six -liter engine with a capacity of 420 horsepower (an absolute record among representative sedans!) There is a constant all -wheel drive that none of the rivals can boast. This is the weighty argument in the fight against competitors for the richest customers - influential businessmen, royal persons and higher officials.

Kommersant-Sport: Do not think that people who buy a short six-liter Audi A8-this modification advertising booklets without quotation marks call sports-they want to save money. Drive this thought away. For those $ 161 433 that it is in the basic configuration, you can buy a long A8 with a 4.2 liter engine with a capacity of 335 hp, sit in the rear seat, stretch your legs, raise the curtain on the side glass and forget about the imperfection of the surrounding world. And the saved $ 25 thousand is enough for a personal driver, and a flasher, and for beautiful numbers. Audi A8 6.0 without the LONG prefix is \u200b\u200bbought to ride themselves.

5 wheels: The engine allows you to go to the point at any speed: 95% of the torque are available between 2300 and 5300 min-1. Frankly, the last time I experienced similar sensations when I tested Mercedes-Benz S-Class with the Biturbo engine. The speedometer arrow runs along the scale, the surrounding landscape turns into something blurry, difficult to recognizable, and nothing happens in the car and with the car at this time. Also, almost silently, the engine works, the same excellent controllability, the same confidence and peace. The camera’s outbreak of the camera that worked in front returns to the ground: one of the neighbors in the transport stream was puzzled for excess speed. It's time to brake. 230 kilometers per hour is much more permitted one hundred and thirty, and I do not want to leave my portrait in the police station at all. A fleeting look in the rearview mirror, the brake pedal to the floor. A couple of seconds, and my speed is exactly the same as everyone else.

NewCartestDrive.com: V8 or 12 cylinders? In Germany, with its high -speed restrictions of autobahns, this would be an easy choice. Provided that the financial side of the case is not taken into account. In our region, the advantage of 12 cylinders is the same image issue as functionality. $ 45,000 in excess of the price of the V8 is too expensive for the image, regardless of how much the gain in cubic centimeters you get. Nevertheless, if you want a 12-cylinder sedan with all-wheel drive, you will not find an alternative in the form of a S-Class or 7th series. Because neither Mercedes nor BMW offer such cars. But even if they offered, A8 6.0 Quattro would still be an excellent choice.

Thetruthaboutcars.com: Audi A8 W12 rides like a devil. Show the transmission, press on the gas, and this leviathan will turn into a controlled rocket that breaks the air with frightening pressure. So it should be. W12, which is discussed and which actually represents two V-shaped sixes, generates 450 horsepower. This is sufficient power to promote the Audi flagship from scratch to hundreds in five seconds or accelerate from any speed to a ceiling of 250 km/h with amazing, seductive, without jerking acceleration.

Sales of the new Audi A8 6.0 Quattro car have been going on in Russia since the spring of 2004. In terms of the number of six hundredths sold, Russia ranks second in the world after the United States. In total, in 2004, 700 Avosek was implemented in the country.
 

Source: "Autopilot"