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What's the difference?
Audi’s flagship is the A8, a long, luxurious sedan where being driven is often as important as doing the driving.
To put this ultra-premium machine in context, it competes with other German heavyweights like BMW’s 7 Series and, of course, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class as well as Porsche’s Panamera. Not to mention the Lexus LS or Maserati’s Quattroporte.
What’s life like at the top of the Audi pyramid? Stay with us to find out.
You know when you're walking along the footpath and you come to a soft spongey bit that the council have put in around a tree and your mind goes: "Whoah, the ground is bouncy but it looks just like bitumen?!"
Well that's the kind of response you'll get from people when they think they're looking at a regular BMW 7 Series, only to have their world go a bit bouncy when they see the Alpina B7 badge on the back of this car as you're overtaking them at Warp Factor 9000.
And you will be overtaking them like a blur because, thanks to the elves at German tuning house Alpina, the B7 is hugely fast for a five-seat, 5.3m-long, 2.2 tonne limo. But then the B7 is fast for any type of car of any dimensions, because with its 330km/h top speed this beast will outrun a McLaren 570GT. Yes, seriously.
Based on the BMW 750Li long wheelbase, the B7 begins life rolling down the same production line as a regular 7 Series. Alpina then goes on to make so many changes to the engine and chassis that the German government requires the BMW VIN to be replaced with a new one.
Ready to find out more? Well there's so much to see here that things may go a bit weird and bouncy again. Be prepared.
The Audi A8 swims in a luxury car shark tank where those paying the big dollars expect top-shelf everything. It delivers a serene driving experience whether you’re in the front or the back, in a superbly engineered and executed luxury sedan package. Not perfect, but very, very impressive.
The BMW Alpina B7 is a special car destined (like all Alpinas) to be a collector's item, due to its rarity and exclusivity. I asked Alpina just how many current model B7s there are in Australia and the answer was "less than five", which is just as mysterious as most people find the car in general.
The B7 is fast – too fast to enjoy legally on Australian roads – but it is also supremely comfortable and well appointed. For Alpina fans lucky enough to be driven in on,e this would make for a truly rare and niche way to be chauffeured.
The A8 is close to 5.2 metres long, yet instantly recognisable as an Audi thanks mainly to its evenly weighted proportions, gently curved roofline and overall high-waisted design. Worth noting its drag coefficient (Cd) is an impressively slippery 0.25.
The characteristic look is accentuated by the brand’s signature, six-sided grille, in this instance highlighted by a matrix of high-relief chrome accents. And typically angular LED Matrix headlights sit either side.
Check out our video review for the carefully orchestrated animation they run through when the car is unlocked.
The car looks equally svelte and contemporary from the rear, with just the right amount of chrome lifting the tone and multi-spoke 20-inch rims filling the wheel arches nicely.
As you’d expect, the top-shelf look and feel continues inside with the seats trimmed in aniline leather, perforated on the front and outer rear positions, with genuine hide also covering the centre console, door rails and armrests, steering wheel and upper dashboard.
Fine grain ash wood inserts sit alongside brushed metal elements and a meticulous attention to detail is obvious… everywhere.
For example, the interior door handle design has been thoroughly thought through, requiring a simple underhand tap to open the door, rather than the more conventional, and ergonomically convoluted, ‘over the top’ movement.
Three sleek screens dial up the tech - a 10.1-inch multimedia interface at the top of the centre stack, an 8.6-inch display below it for heating and ventilation, and a 12.3-inch version of Audi’s ‘Virtual Cockpit’ in the instrument binnacle.
And the spacious rear is the epitome of cool, calm Teutonic form and function. You feel relaxed the moment you get in, and isn’t that the primary aim of a car like this?
This is a good place to start because the B7 looks just like the 750Li it's based on, until you see the first tell-tale signs that it's not one.
There's the front wing with Alpina lettering and the boot-top spoiler, the graphics, which run the length of the car, and the 20-spoke wheels with Alpina badging.
This is late '70s, early '80s styling at its best (and possibly worst), but these special cars can pull off the irony-free look because this is how Alpina BMWs have rolled since 1975, when the E21 320-based Alpina A1/3 was launched.
BMW badges have been left on the bonnet and boot, but there's Alpina B7 BiTurbo lettering in place of the 7 Series identifier.
Most people walked by it in the street thinking it was just a big BMW, others scratched their heads wondering what I'd done to my big German limo and a handful almost dropped to their knees in praise and wonderment at spotting a rare beast like this in the wild.
These people all had their own Alpina stories – one was the third generation of an Alpina-owning family. You become a member a small and passionate club when you buy into this rarefied brand.
The standard B7's cabin is close to identical to the luxurious interior of the 750Li, save for Alpina-embossed stitching in the headrests of the soft, leather seats, the virtual instrument cluster and the Alpina plaque on the centre console denoting the build number.
The B7 is long, low and wide at just under 5.3m end to end, 1.5m tall and 1.9m across. A 3.2m wheelbase means cabin room is more than just spacious.
The B7 rolls off the Dingolfing production line in Germany and is then handed over to Alpina's facility in Buckle, where significant changes take place. Read on to find out how the B7 is different from a regular 750Li.
Space is luxury, be it a large house, a first class seat or a spacious car, and at nearly 5.2 metres long with a close to 3.0m wheelbase the Audi A8 measures up.
Even before you get in, the doors have an amazing sense of solidity and quality. It’s like opening and closing a bank vault… if that huge circular door had a power-assisted soft-close function.
There’s copious amounts of space for the driver and front passenger with lots of storage including a lidded box between the front seats, complete with a two-piece longitudinally split top design, so you can sneak your half’s open without displacing your neighbour’s elbow.
The door bins are decent but there isn’t a specific cut-out for bottles, so it’s more a case of laying them down than standing them up. There’s also a handy covered cubby at the end of the door armrests.
The glove box is a good size and there are two cupholders under a pop-up cover in the centre console.
Of course, the back is where space really counts, and there’s as much room as you’d find in, well… a limo.
Sitting behind the driver’s seat, set for my 183cm position, I enjoyed copious amounts of head, shoulder and legroom.
There are electric sunblinds for the rear and rear side windows, controlled by buttons in the door as well as the rear seat remote, a 5.7 inch OLED display housed in the beautifully trimmed fold-down centre armrest (which also has a soft close function!). The remote also allows adjustment of the lighting and climate control. Classy.
There’s a shallow storage box and twin cupholders in the armrest, medium size door bins and hard shell pockets on the front seat backs. The rear armrests also feature a small lidded cubby.
In terms of connectivity and power options there’s wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, a USB-A and USB-C in the front, and an identical pair in the rear, as well as a 12-volt socket in the front and two in the back.
Boot volume is a useful 505 litres (VDA) and the lid is electric, with gesture control. It’s able to easily swallow our three-piece luggage set or the bulky CarsGuide pram. And while the rear seats don’t fold there’s a ski port door to accommodate long items. Just make sure you use the tie-down anchors in the boot to ensure they’re properly secured. There’s a handy netted section behind the left wheel well and a cargo net is included.
Maximum towing capacity, for a braked trailer, is 2.3 tonnes (750kg unbraked) and in more good news, the spare is a space-saver rather than the increasingly prevalent inflator/repair kit.
The B7 is a five-seater limousine although with the fold-down rear centre armrest which houses the media control panel the back is really set up to carry two.
That 3.2m wheelbase means cabin space is enormous. At 191cm tall I can sit behind my driving position with about 30cm between my knees and the seatback. Those rear doors open wide and the entrance is huge, making entry and exit almost as easy as just walking through a doorway. The air suspension also rises and lowers the B7's ride height for better access.
Storage is excellent, with two cupholders and door pockets for rear passengers, along with the area inside the centre armrest.
Up front, the driver and co-pilot have a deep centre console storage bin with split-opening lid, two cupholders and door pockets.
Luggage space is good, with a 515-litre boot.
With an entry price of $202,700, before on-road costs, the A8 is in the thick of it amongst its full-size primo sedan competitors from Europe and Japan. Specifically, BMW’s 740i MHEV ($272,900), the Lexus LS500h ($195,920), Maserati Quattroporte GT ($210,990), Mercedes-Benz S450 ($244,700) and Porsche’s Panamera ($207,800).
By definition, a luxury car should be loaded to the gunwales with features that make life on the road that little bit easier. And aside from the performance and safety tech we’ll cover shortly, the highlights from a very lengthy standard equipment list are - 20-inch alloy rims, metallic paint, adaptive cruise control, digital matrix LED headlights, digital OLED tail-lights, full keyless entry and start, power-assisted door closing, power boot lid (with gesture control), a panoramic sunroof, heated, ventilated and massaging electrically adjustable front seats, heated front armrests and extended leather trim (centre console, door rails and armrests, steering wheel and upper dashboard).
Also included are ambient interior lighting (with 30 colours and six colour profiles), four-zone climate control, electric sunblinds for the rear and rear side windows, ‘Audi Connect’ navigation and multimedia (with voice and handwriting recognition), wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, 17-speaker 730-watt Bang & Olufsen audio (with digital radio) and a colour head-up display.
There’s a lot more, and the A8 can hold its head high in terms of pricing and features relative to its $200K price tag and the competition.
The B7 lists for $389,955, while a 750li is about $319,000. At this level, $70K seems like a downright reasonable premium to pay for a faster, more powerful, better handling and comfier version of the 750Li.
In this case you're paying more but getting more, although standard features are close to identical. There's adaptive LED headlights, head-up display, night vision with pedestrian detection, a 10.25-inch touch screen up front and two screens in the second row for TV and other media functions.
There's a reversing camera, sat nav, harman/kardon surround stereo and Apple CarPlay. There's leather upholstery, seat massagers in the front and rear, four-zone climate control, heated and ventilated front and rear seats, front and rear parking sensors, auto tailgate, sunblinds for the rear and rear-side windows and proximity key.
The safety features are listed in the section below, and that list is also impressive.
Rivals to the B7 include the Mercedes-AMG S63, which lists for $375,000, the $331,700 Audi S8 and even the Bentley Flying Spur, which almost matches its price at $389,500.
The Audi A8 50TDI is powered by a 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 engine sending 210kW (from 3500-4000rpm) and 600Nm (from 1750-3250rpm) to all four wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission (with ‘Tiptronic’ sequential manual shift function) and Audi’s quattro constant all-wheel drive system using a self-locking centre differential.
It also features a 48-volt electrical set-up for mild hybrid functionality built around a belt connected starter/generator, AC to DC converter and a 48-volt lithium-ion battery.
With energy recovery of up to 12kW from regenerative braking, it enables the A8 to regularly coast with the engine switched off and helps the extended stop-start system to operate smoothly.
Alpina takes the 4.4-litre twin turbo V8 from the BMW 750Li and rebuilds the engine by hand. Alpina fits its own turbochargers, air-intake set -up, high-capacity cooling system and Akrapovic quad exhaust. Output is 447kW and 800Nm – an increase of a whopping 117kW and 150Nm over the 750Li's grunt.
It's interesting to note that the V12-powered 760Li has a smidge more power, at 448kW, and the same torque output as the B7.
How fast is the B7? Supercar fast – the B7 has a top speed of 330km/h, which will see it outrun a McLaren 570 and almost keep up with a Ferrari F12. That's quite incredible for a 2.3-tonne limousine with three TVs on board. A 0-100km/h time of 4.2 seconds is also hugely impressive.
In comparison, a 750Li has a 0-100km/h time of a not-too-shabby 4.7 seconds, but the car is electronically limited to 250km/h.
An eight-speed automatic transmission shifts gears smoothly, although a little slowly in Normal mode, while Sport and Sport+ add urgency and harder shifts.
Finally, the B7 is all-wheel drive, and those rear wheels are designed to steer slightly for better cornering performance.
Audi’s official fuel economy number for the combined (ADR 81/02 - urban, extra-urban) cycle is 6.6L/100km, the 3.0-litre turbo-diesel V6 emitting 175g/km of CO2 in the process.
Over a week of city, suburban, and some freeway running we averaged 11.1L/100km, which is acceptable for a 2.1-tonne luxury sedan.
Also worth noting the standard stop-start system works beautifully thanks to the 48-volt starter/generator.
You’ll need 82 litres of diesel to fill the tank and using the official number, that translates to a range of just over 1240km, which drops to around 740km using our real-world figure.
The B7 is probably not the car to own if you're concerned about either fuel prices or emissions, but then the twin-turbo V8 may not be as thirsty as you'd think, with Alpina stating that, after a combination of urban and open-road driving, you should only use 9.6L/100km.
My time in the B7 saw me double that usage but this could have had something to do with me turning off the stop-start system and driving in Sport mode constantly.
Despite extensive use of aluminium in the ‘ASF’ platform and body panels, the A8 tips the scales at a sturdy 2095kg, yet Audi says the A8 will accelerate from 0-100km/h in just 5.9 seconds. And with 600Nm of peak torque available across a flat plateau from 1750-3250rpm this big four-door gets up and goes hard when asked to.
At more sedate speeds you’re occasionally reminded there’s a diesel engine under the bonnet, with that characteristic engine and exhaust noise only making their presence felt under pressure.
In fact, under normal circumstances, noise, be it the engine, tyres or wind is minimal, thanks to a combination of the car’s aero-efficient shape, thick acoustic glass and other sound-deadening measures throughout the car.
The eight-speed auto transmission is suitably smooth, with the central shifter or wheel-mounted paddles able to make snappy sequential ‘manual’ shifts.
There are four drive modes in the ‘Drive Select’ system - ‘Comfort’, ‘Auto’, ‘Dynamic’ and ‘Individual’ - enabling tweaks to the steering, transmission, throttle and suspension. Comfort felt most appropriate most of the time, although dialling up the throttle and transmission to more aggressive modes in Individual adds an enjoyable edge.
The suspension is five-link front and rear with an adaptive air system smoothing even high-frequency bumps and ruts amazingly well.
Push into a corner and the A8 feels nicely balanced, its wide track, sophisticated suspension, plus the quattro AWD system seamlessly distributing drive between the front and rear axles, keeping the big body under control. In fact, you feel the ‘big car shrinking around you’ syndrome from the get-go.
The steering is precise without being overly sharp and road feel is good. Again, with that 2.1-tonne kerb weight in mind, braking is appropriately powerful with big ventilated discs front (350mm) and rear (330mm).
It pays to remember the turning circle is 12.5m, and it’s worth picking your spot for a U- or three-point turn.
Although there’s a lot going on for the driver in terms of screens, buttons and switches it all makes sense ergonomically. The head-up display is helpful and there’s a common sense mix of digital and physical controls, the latter including an audio volume knob. Yes.
Who on Earth thinks a BMW 750Li isn't fast enough or comfortable enough, even with all its horsepower, luxurious cabin and technology? Alpina, that's who.
Redevelopment of the 4.4-litre V8 with new turbochargers, a high-capacity cooling system, different air suspension set-up and an exhaust system made by Akrapovic have made this already exceptional car better. Better to drive and better to be driven in.
The ride, even on those 21-inch wheels and low-profile Michelin Pilot Super Sport tyres (255/35 ZR21 on the front and 295/30 ZR 21 on the rear) is incredibly comfortable. I drove it and also had a chance to recline in the back and be chauffeured (by our photographer) and the ride was so composed and refined it was hard to believe I was travelling along some truly awful urban roads with their cracked and pot-holed surfaces.
And it's quiet, too. Which will suit those in the back being transported swiftly from the airport to their next meeting, but if you're after a loud and angry exhaust note then you won't find it in the B7. Sure, from the outside at full throttle the B7 has a menacing growl, but this isn't a BMW M car that will bark and snarl.
See, while BMW's M division makes brutal, loud, high-performance versions of their regular cars, Alpina makes comfortable, stealthy, high-performance ones.
All-wheel drive provides fantastic traction and ensures that grunt doesn't just tear the tyres off those rims when you sneeze on the throttle.
And while the air-suspension is soft and comfortable, adaptive dampers adjust for when the road goes twisty, providing impressive handling for a heavy and long car.
Really, though, the B7 is built for long, endless stretches of roads, and the acceleration beyond 100km/h is almost as startling as that from 0-100km/h, as it wants to push straight past 200km/h towards that 330km/h top speed.
Which, unless you know a good lawyer or happen to be one, will send you straight to jail. Yes, the B7 is probably too much car for Australian roads. Only on a German autobahn would a B7 be fully at home.
I felt like I was given a Melbourne Cup-winning racehorse for a week but could only ride it in my suburban backyard.
Even though the A8 hasn't been assessed by ANCAP, as you might expect, it goes to town when it comes to active safety tech, the car’s standard crash-avoidance features including auto emergency braking (AEB) (pedestrians/cyclists - 5.0-85km/h, vehicles - to 250km/h), ‘Active Lane Assist’, blind-spot monitoring, a reversing camera and 360-degree view (including kerb view function), front and rear parking sensors, ‘Collision Avoidance Assist’ (steering assistance in critical situations), ‘Turn Assist’ (monitors incoming traffic when turning right), and rear cross-traffic alert.
There’s also ‘Intersection Crossing Assist’, ‘Attention Assist’, tyre-pressure monitoring and an ‘Exit Warning System’ (detects cars and cyclists when opening doors).
If all that isn’t enough to avoid a crash the airbag count runs to nine, including front and side bags for the driver and front passenger, side airbags covering the outer rear passengers, full length curtains and a front centre airbag to minimise head clash injuries in a side impact. A first aid kit, warning triangle and high visibility vests are also on-board.
There are three top tethers for baby capsules/child seats across the back seat with ISOFIX anchors on the outer positions.
The Alpina B7 comes with all of the BMW 750Li's safety equipment – this includes AEB, lane-keeping assistance and lane-departure warning, blind-spot warning, active cruise control, night vision with object recognition, auto parking and surround view camera.
Along with the suite of airbags, there's traction and stability control and ABS, as you'd expect.
The 750Li and B7 have not been given an ANCAP score.
The A8 is covered by Audi Australia’s five-year/unlimited km warranty, which is now par for the luxury market course, and 24-hour roadside assistance is included for the duration.
Paint defects are also covered for five years, with rust (to the point of perforation) covered for 12. Nice.
Service is required every 12 months or 15,000km with a five-year capped-price plan for the A8 coming in at $3830, or $766 per year. That’s a fair wedge but not outrageous for the category.
The B7 is covered by BMW's three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. Servicing is recommended every 12 months or 15,000km. The B7 is covered by BMW special vehicles servicing plan, which means services are cost-free for the first three years of the car's life.