The A8 saloon is the biggest and most luxurious Audi money can buy. A thickly carpeted sitting room done out in leather and walnut, it is tailored meticulously to its owner's pleasure and comfort.
For instance, the reception on the dashboard's pop-up television screen was crisper than anything I can get at home. The driver's seat appeared to have been hand-moulded by Bavarian craftsmen over a period of many years to meet the exact contours of my frame. The car's Bose hi-fi filled the boudoir with sound that was almost comically rich and lively. I did not know whether to drive it or move in.
In the interests of complete disclosure and overall journalistic probity, however, I wish to declare directly that my Audi A8 3.7 Quattro arrived for review with a little sweetener left quietly in its boot.
At least, I'm assuming that the black leather writing case, wrapped in white card and tissue and supplied with a discretely logo'd protective slip, was a sweetener rather than an optional extra available right across the range, or something mistakenly left behind by the previous driver.
And if I'm right, then I should add quickly that such a piece of boot-mounted bribery was a first in my experience as a reviewer of cars. One is aware of the general perception that motoring journalism is the last thriving bastion of payola and that the car industry is continually foisting envelopes of money and baskets of food upon panting and unscrupulous newspaper writers. That was certainly a core part of my own reasons for being eager to take part in it.
The reality, as ever, turns out to be quite a bit more prosaic and, in fact, in more than two years, no company has attempted to help make my mind up by leaving a writing case in the boot of its product, or anything else, for that matter, apart from a spare wheel and a first-aid kit.
Really, they shouldn't have. In fact Audi could have gone in the opposite direction and posted anonymous notes about the car for me to discover, each of them brutally rude on the subject of my mother, and I still would have found it impossible to take against the A8.
It has been impressive since it was launched in 1994 as the first grandscale luxury car to have a lightweight aluminium body, and it remains impressive in this new form, which, visually, hasn't altered much. The rear windows seem a little more sleek and coupe-like, and the radiator grille is more boxy, but in most other respects it's the same incredible hulk.
What's new is a bunch of high-end electronic circuitry, lending the car a multimedia interface computer and enabling it to perform tricks such as bending the beam of its headlights into the direction you are travelling - very handy for those sharp mountain roads, if you have any of those where you live.
The new A8 also has automatically adaptive suspension. Go fast and the car hunkers down closer to the ground, so it doesn't have to totter through corners, but can drop its nose and burst through them without necessarily causing you to throw your passengers from seat to seat.
In any case, being an Audi, rather than a Mercedes or a BMW, it carries itself with a degree of modesty and an absence of swagger. Indeed, the A8 is about as understated as a car could be that costs nearly £60,000 and occupies an area only marginally smaller than an average three-bedroom bungalow.
And, needless to say, it's very powerful. At normal speeds, the engine can be heard whispering quietly to itself in German beyond the thick glass of the windscreen and the chunky doors. Go to overtake, however, and the engine lets out a deeply satisfying growl and catapults you towards the horizon. (There's a 4.2 version for people who need to be there yesterday.)
It's a four-wheel drive and an automatic - obviously enough. Why would you want to sit in an A8 and do anything as menial as push a gearstick around? The car is targeted precisely at those kinds of people who long to be described as "a brilliant delegator", and the specific thing it enables you to delegate, pretty much wholesale, is all of the labour normally associated with driving. Give or take a Rolls Royce or a Bentley or two, and this must be as close as driving comes to reclining on a leather sofa with one's hands behind one's head. Probably no car on the market so thoroughly whisks the workload off your desk.
The A8 owners club would have to be a mix of company owners, German heads of state and Premiership football club chairmen. I remembered the sensations cars like these provoke from a week behind the wheel of a BMW 7 series. They included a powerful sense of entitlement, which did not always bode well for the feelings of fellow road users, and an overwhelming urge to stand by Iain Duncan Smith in his time of need.
Still, what fun. I eventually settled with my conscience over the writing case and decided to return it. But I'm keeping the car.
