What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

Click away, paparazzi, I’ve got nice clean Y-fronts ^{Audi A8 3.0 TFSI}

Until quite recently it was pretty easy to run the public relations department of a car company. You organized foreign jollies for journalists, you got one of them to translate the vehicle’s publicity pack into something close to English and then you ran a fleet of press demonstrators.

And your boss was happy if the journalist you flew out to St Tropez, and furnished with a fully fuelled car for the week, gave it a friendly notice in his paper. Even if the paper in question was the Welsh Pig Breeders’ Gazette.

But then Audi employed a man called Jon Zammett as its head of PR, and he decided he wasn’t really that bothered about small puff pieces in provincial farming magazines. What Zammett wanted was to see Audi in Hello!.

So on the quiet he began to furnish various celebrities with Audis. He has been so successful that now pretty well every star we put in Top Gear’s Reasonably Priced Car tells us that he has an Audi and that he’s very pleased with it. And it’s not just celebrities, either.

Why do you think Zammett was invited to last year’s royal wedding? Why does he now appear on red-carpet party guest lists more than Jordan and Victoria Beckham combined? Simple. You have a face? You want wheels? He is a one-stop shop in a suit.

It was a brilliant wheeze, a fairly low-cost plan that took Audi out of the oily rags and into the diamond-encrusted, pap-spattered glitter ball of celebrity. Frankly, the man’s a genius.

Providing stars with cars was only part of his headline-grabbing antics. Because in the past celebrities were expected to make their own way from their sumptuous homes to the glittering gala do. This meant they would turn up in front of the flashguns in whatever their local chauffeur company happened to be running at the time – an S-class Mercedes, usually.

Zammett realized this was a lost opportunity, and so at a secret location – in Warwickshire – he keeps a vast flotilla of Audi A8s and the contact details of a hundred or so former coppers who can be called upon at a moment’s notice to fire up the fleet and descend on the Empire in Leicester Square.

Just go and check all those old copies of Hello! that you keep by the lavatory. Notice how the car from which a knees-together star with a Daz-white smile is climbing is always an Audi. Zammett did that.

It’s had a marked effect on sales. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when every car firm had its back to the wall, Audi actually shifted more metal than ever before. One company chief said, ‘We note that there is a recession in full swing at the moment. But we have decided not to take part.’

Last year in Britain alone Audi sold 113,797 cars. That’s almost 32,000 more than Mercedes and a staggering 73,000 more than it sold back in 1999.

That’s the result of today’s strange obsession with celebrity. Or is it? Could it be that the new Audi A8 is simply better than its mighty rival the S-class?

In terms of looks, no. If you take away the Audi’s grille, which looks like George Michael’s beard, it could be a Toyota or a Honda. That’s fine if you want to maintain a low profile, but if you want to cut a dash, you’d be better off with the Merc. That thing’s got serious presence.

Value? It’s hard to say, really, because there are countless models and each is available with a vast array of options. The car I tested was a four-wheel-drive petrol-powered 3.0 TFSI, and that’s just shy of £60,000 – a tiny bit less than an entry-level S-class.

So what about space? Well, I was recently chauffeured in an A8 to the ballet and I fell asleep in the back. So it’s fine. It’s also fine in the front. But then it would be. It’s a really, really big car.

So now we must consider what it’s like to drive, and this is where Audis in recent years have come a cropper. The company’s engineers have never understood that road-worker Johnnys in Britain are not quite as thorough as their opposite numbers in Germany. Which means that big Audis in the past have always been way too firmly sprung. Or, to put it another way, uncomfortable.

The new model is different because the driver is allowed to choose just how soft and gooey he wants the ride home to be. And we’re not talking here simply about the suspension. Oh no.

You’ve various settings for that, including Comfort, Automatic and I-Want-to-Go-Around-the-Nürburgring. You have a similar variety of choices for the engine and gearbox, the steering, the differential, the lights and even the seatbelts. Why? This is a large car, designed for large people who just want to get home after a large lunch. If they’d wanted a bone-hard ride with electric performance, they’d have bought a BMW M3.

In a bit of a huff, I put everything in Comfort mode and set off up the M40. It was utterly delightful. As relaxing as a happy ending. Smooth, quiet, soft – exactly how a big car should feel.

But then I turned off the motorway, and oh dear. All of a sudden the suspension and the steering seemed to lose control of the bulk. It was like trying to drive home on a slightly decomposed hippo. So I dived back into the menu and chose the Dynamic setting, and suddenly everything was worse.

Eventually I realized that it’s best to let the computer choose a setting to suit the conditions. But even here there’s an issue. Because the steering system constantly flicks from Dynamic to Comfort, you are never sure how much effort you should use to turn the wheel. Sometimes you think just a bit will be required, and then just as you spot a bus coming the other way, you realize it should have been a lot.

There are other small irritations, too. The gear selector is too fiddly, the steering-wheel-mounted buttons feel cheap, the dash is made from wood (very 1986) and when you select reverse, the radio turns itself down. Is this so you can hear when your dog’s head bursts? Surely it’s too late then.

Another point I should make at this stage. Don’t bother with the 3-litre petrol I drove. It’s quiet and refined, but in all honesty the diesel provides all the get-up-and-go, with less thirst. And a better resale value.

It sounds here as though I have a downer on the new A8, but that’s not strictly accurate. Because when it’s bad, it’s not really very bad at all. And when it’s good, it’s fantastic. It is so quiet and so comfortable on the motorway, you can set the cruise control, sit back and use the on-board wi-fi to get on with some emails. Just remember that if you’ve selected the auto steering, it doesn’t actually mean it will steer automatically.

I also loved the quality of the stereo and the DAB radio system that let me listen to Christian FM. This is much better than normal radio because you are not warned about traffic jams ahead. Only the fact that you will soon be engulfed by God’s fiery love.

Truth be told, though, you get Christian radio in a Mercedes S-class as well. And with that car you will always have upmarket mini-cabbers queuing around the clock when the time comes to sell. It’s a more sensible buy.

The trouble is that in a Merc you look like a fat man on his way to a meeting. In the Audi, thanks to the efforts of Mr Zammett, you look like Jude Law.