• Competes with: BMW 7 Series, Mercedes-Benz S Class
• Looks like: A luxury car fit for a movie set in the not too distant future
• Drivetrain: 372 hp 4.2-liter V-8 with eight speed transmission, all-wheel drive
• Hits dealerships: Late 2010

Audi dropped the veil on its all-new flagship sedan the 2011 A8 today in Miami. The new sedan tops the brand’s range and looks to be solid competition for the recently redesigned BMW 7 Series and the slightly aging Mercedes-Benz S-Class. It definitely stands out in the design department with an over-exaggerated chrome grille, huge LED headlights and a back end fitting of Blade Runner.

The A8 here is the standard model, a long wheel base model will also be available when the two go on sale late in 2010. However, the standard A8 is 202 inches long, just two inches shy of the outgoing long-wheel base edition. There’s no telling how big the stretched 2011 will get. The good news is that while Audi won’t give out official weight figures, the larger 2011 will weigh virtually the same as the 2010 and less than the competition.

Audi has been a pioneer in using LED lighting around headlights as either daytime running lights or as accent lights. The A8’s entire headlight structure is made up of LEDs and the design looks a bit too wild for anything that will be heading to the country club.

Underneath the design is a revised all-aluminum chassis, which the company says is 25% more rigid than the 2010 model.

Moving all that new sheetmetal and aluminum underpinnings is a more powerful version of the V-8 from the current A8. It’ll put out 372 hp and 328 lb.-ft of torque, mild improvements from the 350 hp and 325 lb. ft of the 2010. A new eight-speed automatic transmission is teamed to standard all-wheel drive. That gets the A8 to 62 mph n 5.7 seconds while returning 15% better fuel economy. However, those numbers are to be determined.

An adjustable suspension system is standard and allows for four different settings: Dynamic, Comfort, Auto, Individual.


Audi’s multimedia interface that controls navigation, air conditioning, audio and other functions gets an upgrade and can now recognize handwriting in various languages. It rests above the shifter, which Audi categorizes as “yacht” like.

One of our favorite features of the old A8 was its optional Bang & Olufson sound system. That $8,000 option had 1000 watts and some nifty pop-up tweeters. The new system has 19 speakers and 1400 watts. Clearly more is better with this A8. If you don’t opt for the upgrade you’re stuck with a Bose surround system as standard equipment.

There’s also an array of standard and optional safety features that are becoming more common among cars in this class. A pre-collision system is teamed with adaptive cruise control and there is also lane departure warning and blind spot detection.

The 2011 A8 and its long-wheel base variant will likely ring in at least as much as the outgoing 2010’s starting price of  $74,550. Audi also says a hybrid version may be available in the near future.