Learning to draw in the Audi A8

Published: 27 May 2010 Updated: 26 January 2015

So, you’re lucky to head home for the night in Audi’s new A8, and set about trying to impress your girlfriend with its multitude of gadgets. Our car had everything from heated and cooled seats, night vision with pedestrian recognition, headlights that work with the sat-nav, adaptive cruise control that can brake the A8 to a standstill, plus speed limit detection, lane change warning devices, parking cameras, and a very impressive Bang & Olufsen sound system with 19 speakers.

Was she impressed? Was she heck.

Instead, the only thing that got any attention was the touchpad. Think of it as the next-gen version of Audi’s MMI dial, as rather than having to twist and twiddle your way to each letter, you just scrawl it out with a finger. There are over 25,000 characters stored in the A8’s memory banks, and it works brilliantly. Except that wasn’t what impressed her – instead, she used it draw everything from cats and mice, to genitalia (it’s the former that I’ve posted online for obvious reasons), and declared it the perfect way to keep her occupied on long journeys. So much for the 10.8-inch tv screens in the back.

The Audi A8 – it’s an £80k Etch A Sketch.

>> A pointless gadget? Click ‘Add your comment’ below and let us know what you think

By Ben Pulman

Ex-CAR editor-at-large

Comments