Audi’s flagship sedan faces rethink amid declining A8 sales
Audi is re-evaluating the future of its flagship A8 sedan as sales decline and focus shifts to the long-awaited Q9 SUV.
Ahead of the arrival of the much-delayed Q9 next year, Audi has indicated that the future of its flagship sedan, the A8, remains under discussion as the current D8 generation enters its eighth year of production this month.
The likeliest solution
The Citizen reports that revealed at the Frankfurt Motor Show eight years ago, the A8 has undergone a solitary update since then in 2021, which, apart from interior and exterior revisions, saw the removal of the 6.3-litre W12 and 4.0 TDI engine options.
A model whose sales have continued to decrease in Europe, Ingolstadt’s head of technical development Geoffrey Bouquot admitted that the search for a suitable platform for the next A8 is ongoing and that no decision has yet been made.
Whereas the Q9 is set to use the Premium Platform Combustion and therefore continue to offer a combustion engine option, the heavily updated version of the existing MLB Evo architecture seems the most logical choice for the A8, as the D8 is currently underpinned by it.
Speaking to Germany’s Automobilwoche, Bouquot said: “We are thinking intensively about when we will launch the successor to the A8 and which drive technology is the right one.”
Low key
Currently the oldest of the German big three flagship sedans, the D8 A8 has remained forbidden fruit for South Africa, where only the performance S8 has been sold since 2022.
Listed below the RS Q8 as the second most expensive model at R2 973 900, the S8 has accounted for an understandably tiny portion of Audi South Africa’s sales figures, with its full year in 2023 netting only two units.
This rose to four last year before dropping back to three this year so far.
By comparison, no sales figures for the BMW 7 Series and Mercedes-Benz S-Class are known, as neither brand reports month-by-month offsets to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa.
More details about the A8 are expected to emerge only after the debut of the Q9 next year.
Additional information from motor1.com.
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