Groovy! Audi Offers Black-Light Tease for New Q8 SUV Coupe
No, this is not an LSD flashback or a poster on the wall of a darkened dorm room. It’s Audi trying to build Facebook and Twitter buzz for its coming top-of-the-line Q8 SUV coupe using Day-Glo striping that shows off the new model’s contours under black light.
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The teases include still photos and a video, and Audi gives away the punchline in a caption for the video: “Actually, the new Audi Q8 is still top secret — but Audi has come up with something special to give a first glimpse. In a secret design studio Audi turned off the lights — and highlighted the main lines of the first and largest SUV luxury coupe with the help of black light.”
As you can see from the video below, the contours seem very close to the Q8 concept that Audi unveiled more than a year ago at the 2017 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. At the time Audi said the production model would be unveiled sometime in 2018.
While the interior was strictly show-car material, the exterior looked close to production ready. That concept also was a plug-in hybrid. We have no hint of the configurations the Q8 will offer when it arrives, but that seems unlikely as the only powertrain out of the box. The only other thing known about the Q8 is that it is expected to share the platform used by various Volkswagen Group brands’ big SUVs, including the Audi Q7, Porsche Cayenne, Bentley Bentayga, Lamborghini Urus and latest VW Touareg (that’s not coming to the U.S.).
The Q8 would wade into the pool of high-profit luxury SUV coupes that currently includes the Mercedes-Benz AMG GLE coupe and BMW X6. They continue to sell, despite compromises combining some of the more impractical aspects of each type of vehicle. The Q8 teaser roofline is sloped more than the Audi Q7 SUV but is not as exaggerated as the profiles of its German rivals.
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