Why I’d Still Buy an Audi RS Q8 in 2026

This is the new £130,000 Audi RS Q8 Performance. It's got a twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 with 640 horsepower. It'll carry you, your family and your dog at 190 miles an hour and it is the fastest production SUV powered by petrol to ever lap the Nürburgring. This giant SUV is faster around the green hell than a BMW M2, Nissan GTR, McLaren Mercedes SLR, SLS AMG or a Porsche 911 GT3. It's rapid, super rapid. And that's all well and good but I do have a question. In a world obsessed with efficiency and plugging everything that moves into the wall, is a 2.3-tonne SUV obsessed with performance even relevant anymore? Or is it just a relic of the past? I'm going to try and answer that question and a few more. This is my new long-term test car. It's staying on our fleet for the next six months where we'll be experiencing the highs. It's a missile. And the lows. It's a bit of a shame really. And the horrific fuel bills to find out what it's actually like to live with an RS Q8 in 2026. So stick around for the reality in this and future videos. What's changed for 2026? Quite a lot actually, including the engine. So this thing is powered in its standard form by a twin-turbo 4.0-litre V8 with 600 horsepower but this is the performance car which has 640 horsepower and 850 Newton meters of torque. Look at the thing! So lovely. That will do 0-62 in 3.6 seconds and flat out it'll tickle 190 miles an hour. So it is super, super quick. And it also looks good. This is basically the Lambo Urus before it went to Turkey and got all that work done. There are some upgrades over the previous car though including a new grille pattern up front, a new lower bumper section and new HD matrix LED with laser lights that can provide double the illumination range of a normal LED light. Super handy if you live in the countryside or just like blinding other people. It's got the same overall shape as before. No bad thing. Quite often with these performance SUVs you get a choice of a coupe back like is on this car or a more traditional SUV back but Audi don't make an RS Q7 so that's what we got. And it's quite nice. This colour, this is Ascari Blue which is a delightful shade and if you look closely you'll see some sparkling elements in the paintwork as well. That's lovely. And then the wheels. It comes as standard with 22s or if you spend an extra £2,500 you can get massive 23s. And look at the brakes. Carbon ceramic brakes. Those are massive as well. And look at this, self-levelling centre caps. Basically a Rolls Royce. At the back, some more subtle differences. There are new rear lights to help it stand out along with a new lower bumper and diffuser. The rest is pretty familiar though including the subtle rear spoiler and quad exhausts with chunky twin finishes. The exhaust, in case you're wondering, sounds a bit like this. I love a soft limiter, don't you? Sounds glorious. Not. Anyway, let me show you the practicality on the RS Q8. It does have one of those fancy boots where if you've got some shopping bags you can open it by doing that. It takes a while to... It does work. Just talk amongst yourselves while I do this. What's going on? There we go. It's not the easiest but it's there. And that is a 605 litre boot which is roughly... What are you doing? You see the problems I've got to work with? That was a 605 litre boot which is roughly 605 litres. I'm just going to use the button actually because it's a lot easier. No underfloor storage to speak of, although there is a tyre puncture repair kit and a subwoofer. The other cool thing on this car though is that you can drop the ride height which is handy when you're loading stuff into the boot because it means that if you've got a heavy object you can slam it down low to get things in more easily. That might help with dogs as well. Speaking of this hatch which is doing all kind of madness right now, you can't actually close it by kicking under there. It doesn't work. Weird. But you can close it by either pressing that button or just giving it a little tug to help it on its way. It'll probably open automatically randomly for no reason now. Thanks for that. Inside the interior is a nice place to spend time but honestly not much has changed for this new model. It is possible to get a new optional RS design package which gives you red, grey or blue on the seats with matching seatbelts but that's not been fitted to this car. So effectively it looks the same as ever. It's a bit of a shame really. This car could really benefit from Audi's updated interior technology. I know I'm moaning about multiple screens all the time but it's when you get in these older cars that you realise how dated they can sometimes feel. Just to demonstrate that I'll go into the navigation system and show you how responsive it is. It's not the fastest, is it? It's quick enough but by modern standards it's a bit behind the times. Also the graphics aren't quite as fancy and we don't get quite as many features as we do in modern cars. I'm talking about things like AI and advanced voice control and things like that. I do like the fact that we have a dedicated area down here for your climate control. That's quite handy. It is a display but it does work really well. And we've got this Audi virtual cockpit which is showing its age. It's still cool in some ways because you can switch the view to whatever you want. But again it's not quite up to the standards of the modern Audis on sale today. Plus you've got all this kind of glossy black stuff down here which looks a bit sort of like yesterday's news really. Shame. It's the same around the back too. Although again that's not necessarily a bad thing. The RS Q8 is extremely spacious in the rear. The seats slide backwards and forwards to give you either more boot space or more legroom and they also recline slightly for comfort. There's a central armrest that folds down where you'll find these pop-up cup holders and there's a dedicated control panel for your heating and aircon plus a large sunroof. The main thing that I notice about the Audi RS Q8 and that is it's not a plug-in hybrid. It's not even really a hybrid. It uses the venerable four-litre twin-turbo V8 used in so many products and it doesn't have any batteries attached to it. Now there are two ways of looking at that. One is to say how very old-school, how very quaint and the other way is to say good, makes a nice change. What it means is there's no silent mode, no EV cruising, just a constant V8 rumble that sounds utterly delicious whether you're at low speed or piling on the revs. Oh, makes a nice noise doesn't it? And that is a good thing because this RS Q8 looks a lot like the standard Audi Q8. To the untrained eye, this is not a car that looks like you dropped £130,000 on it. But I'll tell you what, it goes like you dropped £230,000 on it. It's quick anyway but if you push this RS button on the steering wheel, the car just tightens up, becomes energised and it teleports. It's so quick. It's definitely not as responsive as the latest crop of high-performance electric vehicles. It takes a couple of seconds for the turbos to spin up when you're travelling at low speed but believe me, when those turbos come on song, this thing teleports. Anything beyond about 2,000 rpm, it's a missile. To extract that extra power versus the standard model, Audi has raised the level of boost from the turbos. The performance car also includes a light exhaust system that reduces back pressure to help the engine breathe more freely whilst also providing better noise. The gearbox isn't the quickest. It's the same Tiptronic ZF system that you get in pretty much every car of this type. I'd definitely prefer if the shifts were a bit more violent and engaging. There's a little shudder through the car whenever you go up the box but I'd like a bigger shudder to make it feel a bit more rewarding when you're shifting through the gears. Fuel economy is actually diabolical. I got this car just around when the Iran war was kicking off and no politics here but believe me, the amount of money I have handed over to petrol stations in the recent weeks is frankly terrifying. Thanks Donnie. Yeah, this is not a car for the faint-hearted when it comes to your refuelling bills. The best economy I've averaged in this car is around 15 miles per gallon and the worst is now actually. It's in single figures which is frankly terrifying. If you are going to manage around 15 mpg, expect to pay around 200, 300 pounds a month in fuel. Yearly, you are looking at over four and a half grand easy in petrol. This ain't sensible. It really isn't. We'll dig a bit deeper into the handling characteristics of the car a bit later on in a future video but right here, right now, I can tell you it is very impressive. You've got permanent quattro all-wheel drive so traction is absolutely mega. You've got all-wheel steering as standard. So the turning, phenomenal stability, very impressive. You've got active anti-roll stabilisation and an Audi sport diff. What it all adds up to is a car that is incredibly agile and not for its size. It's incredibly agile full stop. It feels like you're driving a sports car, honestly. They've worked witchcraft with this thing. I think what's equally impressive is that the car isn't hardcore at least not all the time. It can be a real pussycat when you want it to be. It runs on air suspension which when you put it in its softest most comfortable mode just makes it incredibly plush to drive. So there's two personalities to this car. There's the raging monster. And then the absolute pussycat. So the Audi RS Q8 has quite a lot going for it but if we're going to answer the question is it still relevant in this day and age we have to see how it stacks up against its rivals. Rivals like the BMW X5 M or the Mercedes GLE 63 S or the Range Rover Sport SV. But I've crunched the numbers and this thing, believe me, holds its own. It's got more power and more torque and accelerates quicker than all three of its main rivals. Even if you want to go a step above and compare the RS Q8 performance to a Lamborghini Urus the Urus only has 16 horsepower more, isn't noticeably quicker and will cost you £40,000 to £50,000 more. And speaking of bargains, if you think it's time for an Audi RS Q8 then maybe it's time for Autotrader. You can shop for new and used examples on our site and app today. And all of that brings me back to the burning question, which is, is this car still relevant? Well, if you ask your accountant, the answer is a resounding no. Nobody wants a high-riding family hauler that can also lap the Nürburgring in record time. It doesn't make any sense. And they especially don't want one that drinks fuel like a jet engine. The Audi RS Q8 isn't a rational purchasing decision. It's a 640 horsepower engineering middle finger to the norm. It might be a bit irrelevant, a bit unreasonable and frankly very unnecessary but that is exactly why I love it.