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Whether you walk into a bar and order a double, or double down at the blackjack table, or, for those opposed to vice, play a friendly game of mixed doubles tennis, doubling is a call to action. Doubling works in cars, too. Think of the Audi A8’s new 4. 0-liter V-8 as a double dose of Audi’s spectacular 2. 0-liter turbo four. Two 211-hp turbo fours fused into one 420-hp twin-turbo V-8 make for a very quick A8L. Audi assures us that the A8L’s 4. 0-liter is a depressurized version of the 520-hp engine in the S8. It doesn’t really feel that way. A charge to 60 mph takes 3. 9 seconds—Corvette territory. Stay in it, and the long-wheelbase A8L will pass the quarter-mile mark in 12. 4 seconds at 112 mph, a half-second and 6 mph behind the S8. Something this big, this aluminum, this luxurious, and moving this quickly usually flies, too. In a previous life, before double turbos, the 372-hp A8L 4. 2 registered a relatively mundane 5. 1 seconds to 60 mph and a quarter-mile time of 13. 8 seconds at 103 mph. A lazy throttle is the only dissonant note in Audi’s symphonic big sedan. The lethargy mimics turbo lag, but the culprit is more likely a throttle calibration that is initially unresponsive, presumably to smooth step-off acceleration. From the driver’s seat, the car feels less intimidating than the rest of its class of leviathans. Source: www.caranddriver.com
