2025 Audi RS Q8 Performance Review: It's A Bargain (No, Seriously)

Is the 2025 Audi RS Q8 Performance the best deal in all of Volkswagen Group? A strange premise to open with, perhaps, when you're talking about an SUV that starts at $137,495 (including $1,295 destination), but hear me out.

With the new-for-this-year Performance treatment, Audi's most potent gas-powered RS model laughs in the face of its predecessor's "mere" 591 horsepower and 590 lb-ft of torque. Pushing both up into the six-hundreds, it not only delivers that all-important upgrade lure for existing owners, but narrows the gap between the RS Q8 Performance and its cousins with far more expensive branding.

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Those cousins — including the Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and Bentley Bentayga — all carve out niches of their own, even if variations of the twin-tubocharged V8 delivering Audi's 2025 uptick in raw grunt are common across the board. In such illustrious company, though, the not-inexpensive Audi is actually most affordable.

By Audi style standards, the RS Q8 Performance is positively yelling. Compared to its Volkswagen Group stablemates, though, this most aggressive of the automaker's SUVs borders on subtle. Lined up with a Urus, Cayenne, or Bentayga, and you'd be forgiven for ignoring the Audi altogether.

Style is subjective, of course, and not everyone wants a sports car that bellows about its talents. The RS Q8 Performance is a handsome, lantern-jawed fellow: Audi's body kit adds more vents front and rear, a new rear diffuser, and 22-inch 10-V-spoke wheels. As well as the usual array of silver, white, and gray finishes to choose between, there's a bold red, two blue metallics, and even a gold metallic.

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The $2,550 Black Optic Package — fitted on this particular car — includes 23-inch 5-Y-spoke wheels, gray Audi rings, and black exterior trim. Or, you can have the same wheels but in gray matte finish, for $1,500 on their own or as part of the $7,100 Matte Carbon Package. That makes the mirror housings and other exterior trim matte carbon finish, as well as throwing on summer tires.

Inside, the RS Q8's dashboard is a reminder that things have changed considerably when it comes to cabin tech. Audi's dual central touchscreens — multimedia and navigation up top, along with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto; climate and settings adjustment below — and fully-digital virtual cockpit cluster display once felt like they bordered on gadget-overload. These days, with rivals seemingly intent on covering every square inch with screen, this all feels reassuringly restrained.

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The 12.3-inch cluster display can still be switched between various different views — and changes automatically depending on drive mode — and while the infotainment UI isn't exactly eye-catching, it's easy to navigate. Audi's switchgear is solid, and the Alcantara-wrapped steering wheel and metal-edged paddle shifters feel premium. Leather sport seats are standard and strike a good balance between comfortable and supportive, include heating and ventilation, and their black or brown hide offers a choice of contrast stitching.

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The $1,500 Luxury package adds front seat massage and a black Dinamica headliner; the $2,850 Executive package gets heated rear seats, power soft-closing doors, a head-up display, dual pane acoustic glass for the side windows, and both Remote Park Assist Plus and Intersection Assist. Strictly aesthetic, there are Gray and Red versions of the RS Design package — each $4,200 — with things like color-matching seatbelts and floor mats.

Requiring no extras is the 4.0-liter biturbo V8 under the hood, packing 631 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque. That's routed via an 8-speed Tiptronic transmission to all four wheels, with a self-locking center differential, standard rear sport differential — nudging power left to right on the rear axle, depending on traction demands — along with adaptive air suspension. 0-60 mph arrives in 3.4 seconds, Audi says (I suspect they're being conservative), with the RS Q8 Performance rocketing on to an electronically-limited 190 mph.

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That makes it about as quick as, say, Bentley's new 2026 Bentayga Speed (though that has an extra 10 horsepower), though a couple of tenths of a second slower to 60 mph than the Lamborghini Urus S (on paper, anyway). Still, not bad for a car that's about $100k cheaper than the Lambo. You'll want to cough up the $1k extra that Audi charges for the RS sport exhaust system, mind, so that it sounds more in keeping with those meaty performance numbers.

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As usual with Audi's sportier models, there's a welcome split-personality here, which lends the RS Q8 Performance well to daily-driver duties. In Comfort mode, with the air-springs at their plushest, it purrs along merrily: smooth and refined, the epitome of the road trip king.

Switch to Dynamic, or one of the two RS presets — accessible via a shortcut button on the steering wheel — though, and things get ribald. The RS Q8 Performance is brutally efficient in its power delivery, the twin turbos trimming lag down to the barest pause when you nail the gas pedal. Reach the first corner, and the adaptive suspension keeps things level and poised, belying the near-5,500 pound curb weight.

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This is, the automaker is keen to highlight, its most powerful combustion Audi Sport model so far. An RS e-tron GT Performance is swifter — it dispatches the 0-60 run in a borderline uncomfortable 2.4 seconds — but its railgun delivery of pace lacks some of the mechanical charm of the gas-powered SUV. The EV feels like the future, certainly, but it has supplanted not surpassed this dinosaur-fueled forebear.

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Lending to the charm is how easy the RS Q8 Performance makes things. Yes, you can shed speed readily — credit the standard carbon brakes for that — but there's not much need to, the clever active roll stabilization system serving like a steadying hand atop the big SUV. My only real complaint would be that Audi could stand to dial up the drama, ironically, though perhaps the assumption is that, for that, you'll cross the road to the Lamborghini dealership.

In the process, you'd be giving up the RS Q8 Performance's willingness to become near-clandestine when required. The seating for five is spacious front and rear; the 32.96 cu-ft trunk — expanding to 60 cu-ft behind the first row — is practical and easily loaded. Yes, you lose a little space compared to the three-row Q7, but if you only ever pack to the shoulder line, then you'll hardly notice it.

Fuel economy isn't exactly great (no surprise there), with the EPA suggesting 14 mpg in the city, 20 mpg on the highway, or 16 mpg combined. Push hard, and those numbers are decidedly aspirational.

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That's par for the course in a vehicle like this, and frankly, the price delta between the feistiest internal-combustion Audi and its burly brethren leaves plenty in the purse for brimming the gas tank. In no world does a car starting at $137,495 count as the budget option, and suggesting such about the 2025 RS Q8 Performance would be a disservice to what's on offer here. What you trade in volume and head-turning style, you more than make up for with the speedy SUV's do-it-all duality.