It’s been a few weeks since we’ve run a #FotoshopFriday so we thought we’d return to the series with a bang in the form of an Audi RS 8. Given how many comments we get on these stories, we should probably reiterate that THIS IS NOT A REAL CAR. Having said that, we wish it were.
Cjoctavian is a Fourtitude reader who was kind enough to email us this week with his renders of a car he’d love to see built – an Audi RS 8. To our eye, his work is near flawless. He keeps it simple, sticking to key RS design cues from the latest RS 7 and applying them to an S8 base.
According to Cjoctavian, he focused on elements like the front bumper, the honeycomb grille with ‘quattro’ script segmentation, sideskirts and RS 7 21-inch wheels with 275-285/30 R 22 tires. Like the RS 6 and RS 7, he also blacked out the full LED headlights. The suspension was lowered approximately 15mm and added black headliner and even tried to show black Fine Nappa Leather sport seats that would, of course, would suit an RS 8 very well. No doubt they’d be trimmed in Audi’s RS-style honeycomb stitched center segments.



The formula works so well that it made us wonder why Audi hasn’t done such a car yet. Talk about the ultimate Q-ship… or maybe RS-ship.
So will Audi do an RS 8? To be clear, we’ve not heard any inside rumor of such. The closest thing to any sort of story in that direction was a senior executive lamenting that they’d not yet ever had a chance to use the W12 twin turbo that Bentley’s been using in its Continental series for several years and that doesn’t really confirm anything at all in the end.
Were Audi to actually consider adding an RS 8 model to help grow quattro GmbH’s presence, we suspect they might also be tempted to utilize the robust 4.0 TFSI as it’s not nearly as heavy as the W12 twin turbo. Also, since the A8 chassis allows for larger packaging such as the S8′s dual intakes, we suspect there’d be even more power to be had from Audi’s latest wunder engine.



There’s another complication we suspect would play against an RS 8 that looks like the car above. The A8 is due for a facelift soon – a move internally referred to as a ‘product improvement’ or ‘P.I.’. We’re hearing the A8 will be getting a more distinctive look that will make it both more aggressive and also differentiate it further from its A6 and A4 counterparts. And, given Audi’s typical rollout schedule, we’d expect to see that new facelift within the next 12 month.
Could Audi add an RS 8 to the lineup? They could and with both the non-turbocharged W12 and the 4.0 TFSI already in the car, the usual costs around doing so wouldn’t be as bad as adding a whole new model. Even still, they’ve never expressed interest in building such a car in the past. Then again, they hadn’t expressed interest in an RS crossover either but the RS Q3 was just revealed weeks ago. Even though we’ve heard no intel to support it, the enthusiast in us hopes Cjoctavian is most correct in his creation. Time will tell.