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2018 Audi Q8 Goes All Out On The Nurburgring

Q2, Q3, Q5, Q7. Notice anything wrong with the sport utility vehicle lineup over at Audi? There are no Q4 and Q8. Yet. The first of the two that will go official is the Q8, which will try to bring something new to the sport activity vehicle trend started by BMW a decade ago with the X6.
2018 Audi Q8 32 photos
Photo: screenshot from YouTube
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Expected to be presented by the end of the year, production of the Q8 will be handled by the Volkswagen Group’s plant in Bratislava, Slovakia. The factory also produces the Touareg, Q7, and Bentayga, models that have one thing in common with the upcoming Audi Q8: the MLBevo platform.

Spied on this occasion while dropping hot laps on the Nurburgring, the Q8 will act as the flagship of the automaker alongside the all-new A8. Bearing in mind the full-size luxury sedan will be officially revealed on July 11 at an event in Barcelona, the clock is ticking for the high-riding Q8 as well.

Despite its generous size and heft, the pre-production Q8 featured in the adjacent spy video isn’t phased off by hard cornering. Bearing in mind an SQ8 derivative is also on the menu, it’s in the German automaker’s interest to make the luxurious utility vehicle handle as neatly as possible.

Spy photos of the interior reveal a few parts shared with the Q7, with the addition of a touch-sensitive panel for the climate control settings. The Q8 is also expected to adopt the second generation of the Audi virtual cockpit, a piece of technology that should be introduced next month by the A8.

An automatic transmission-only affair, the Q8 will be offered with a selection of six- and eight-cylinder engines. Powerplant options will likely start with a 3.0-liter TDI and top with the 4.0-liter TDI of the SQ8 variant.

On a slight tangent, the compact-sized Q4 is scheduled to go into production in 2019. The Q4 and Q8 will both spawn e-tron plug-in hybrid derivatives.

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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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