G E A R E D - I N

In the rarified world of German luxury sedans, being the most intelligent choice is not always a good thing.  Big, bold and brash cars usually win this contest.  Audi has chosen, probably wisely, not to go down that path, and instead it has come up with a car that is smooth, almost subtle, but bristling with new technology under its skin.

The all-new flagship Audi A8 continues the innovative design of its predecessor.  Instead of a conventional monocoque, the A8 uses a chassis-and-frame design.  The Audi Space Frame is no pickup chassis, however.  The frame castings and extrusions are aluminum, lighter and stronger than steel.  Those components are assembled by riveting and laser welding, resulting in a rigid frame highly resistant to torsional forces, yet 50 percent lighter than an equivalent steel chassis.  The base A8 checks in at 1770 kilograms, not much heavier than some smaller cars like the Jaguar S-type.

The aluminum backbone is clothed with a sleek bodyshell, also fashioned from the same metal.  Designer Walter da Silva, who revitalized Alfa Romeo with cars like the 156, drew the A8 with lines that are trademark Audi: clean, taut, and conservative.  It's not imaginative, because this car carries that Audi sedan look, but in a family that includes the A6 and A4, it's not altogether a bad trait.  The A8's face is dominated by horizontal lines: there are plenty inside the large rectangular grille and lower air intakes.  The 4-circle logo, quad headlamps and round foglamps provide some welcome contrast.  A short front overhang adds some aggressiveness.  The roof traces an unbroken arc, as seen in its siblings and even in the Passat.  The small tail lamps look rather plain, but the sides do flow gracefully into the trunk area.

This smooth shape was worked hard in the wind tunnel, resulting in a 0.27 drag coefficient, one of the lowest for a large sedan.  There's a faired underbody as well, to suppress rear-end lift at high speeds.  Triple-sealed doors and windows, thicker glass panes and even aerodynamically designed wipers help keep down wind and road noise.

Step inside the A8 and you'll find the same conservative luxury theme: there's plenty of wood and leather, and simplicity of controls.   The A8's interior may look restrained as well, but it has all the luxury accoutrements expected in a top-end sedan.

Key to the interior functions is the Multi Media Interface (MMI).  Like BMW's i-Drive system, MMI attempts to give the driver access to the vehicle's hundreds of possible settings via a sophisticated controller.  The MMI is located in the car's center console, and consists mainly of a turn-and-press knob and four control keys grouped around it.   The four control keys correspond to the four corners of the dash-mounted pop-up screen.  There are also eight outer buttons that access the main functions of the system—entertainment, DVD-GPS navigation, communication, information and control of vehicle systems.  The driver selects one of those systems and navigates using the knob and four control keys.   There's also an escape button that pulls you up through the menu system.   The result is an intuitive, simple and easy-to-learn user interface.

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