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Several seasons back, I decided I’d get an Audi A8, their all-wheel-drive flagship sedan, when I hit the lottery. It’s nice to have these things taken care of, so I can concentrate on more mundane things like making mortgage payments . . . .

This year, Audi has thrown me a curve. They’ve brought out — in very limited numbers — a “performance-oriented” version, as they disingenuously style it, of the big, bad boy. It’s called the S8, and to the eye, it looks little different from its more reserved brother. Discreet S8 badging, dual exhaust pipes and polished aluminum rearview mirrors will tip the cognoscenti. It a far more restrained treatment than the comparable Mercedes AMG hotrods or the souped-up M-series Bimmers.

Based on an interior volume of just under 100 cubic feet, the EPA classifies it as a midsize car, but with a wheelbase of 113.4 inches and an overall length of 198.2, it gobbles a fair amount of garage space. And yet, so finely tuned are the proportions, it looks quite tidy in person. (Not to be overlooked is the stretched variant, the A8L, which they brought out last year. It has five more inches of wheelbase to work with.) The S8 sits close to an inch lower than the A8, but is still an easy-to-enter 4-feet-8-inches tall, with plenty of headroom for six-footers front and rear. It has enough legroom up front so that I was able to slide the seat forward a couple of inches, at which point the rear cabin was plausible for three adults across, luxurious for two.

Along with the lowering, the suspension is toughened up quite a bit. The spring rates are 30 percent stiffer and there’s 40 percent more compression damping in the twin-tube, gas-filled shock absorbers, along with beefier anti-roll bars front and rear. The difference is quite noticeable, and might be off-putting to some, vs. the A8’s unruffled demeanor. You pay the price in a ride that is never harsh, but which might become tiring — at this country’s legal speeds. And that is the crux of the matter.

This car is electronically limited to a still politically incorrect 155 mph in the North American market, which implies it could do a bit more. (In Germany, there’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement among the major factories to keep top speeds under 300 kilometers per hour — 186 mph — and everybody knows which wire to cut. How they settled on the magic 155 here, I do not know.)

At any rate, in my researches on some deserted stretches of road in the Tristate, I found that, as anticipated, the ride got better and better as the car climbed toward and beyond the century mark. It felt as if it was really coming into its own around 130, where it hunkered down, quite without benefit of any silly rear spoiler, and glided over concrete as if it were glass, but still with a marvelously direct sense of control. Even at hypervelocities (as defined by the Ohio Revised Code) the interior was reasonably quiet, although at 5,000 rpm and beyon d, the engine’s note became entrancingly savage. At legal speeds, the cabin is hushed, thanks in some measure to the dual-pane acoustical glass.

Ah, yes, the engine. It’s just a little thing, a mere 255 cubic inches or 4.172 liters, with eight cylinders and 40 valves. But with dual intake paths and new camshafts, it’s a bit friskier than the one in the A8 — 50 horses more, to be precise. The standard 310 is righteous, the S8’s 360 is stompin’ — if you can go fast enough to make the most of it. Torque is up only slightly, from 310 foot-pounds to 317, so seat-of-the-pants feel is quite similar, up to a point.

Almost everything on the S8, as on the A8, that can be made of aluminum, is, including the spaceframe body shell and suspension. Consequently, though freighted with more extras than one can enumerate, the S8 weighs in just a hair over 4,000 pounds. Thus, 0-60 times are in the low-six-second range ad, even more impressively, quarter-mile dashes take just 13 secon d change.

Besides the basic price of admission, there are two extra sin taxes for all this fun — premium fuel is de rigueur, and there’s a gas guzzler tax of $1,700 on this rocket ship, owing to its puny EPA numbers of 15 mpg city, 21 highway. (My tally: 16.2.) At these prices, though, conspicuous consumption is part and parcel of the experience. We’re at a power level here that demands a bit of management. The S8 delivers with permanent all-wheel drive, via the familiar Torsen fluidic center differential and electronically locking front and rear diffs. It also is blessed with traction control, which keeps the wheels from spinning when they have more power than stick, and “ESP,” the cleverly acronymic electronic stability program.

This is a little electronic gnome who sits in the main computer and doles out power wheel-by-wheel based on inputs from wheel-speed sensors, the antilock system, steering angle sensors, yaw moment detectors and lateral G-force sensors. Essentially little Klaus knows the car’s capabilities better than the human agency behind the wheel and can overrule him or her when he or she asks more than the car has to give.

With Audi’s brilliant suspension and AWD system and those massive 245 – 45 – 18 Z-rated tires, one would have to be somewhat suicidal to exceed the limits on dry pavement, but the ESP inspires great confidence on slick roads. The transmission is a five-speed automatic endowed with considerable smarts plus the Porsche Tiptronic semi-manual shifting option. The brakes are ventilated discs front and rear, with antilock assist. They performed as one would expect and were easily modulated.

If all else fails, there are no less than eight air bags to keep human parts away from harder elements — two in the dash, one in each seatback, one in the driver’s and co-pilot’s seats and two side-mounted head-protection curtains.

The stereo is a Bose unit, AM-FM-cassette-in-dash-CD, which, despite being hobbled by an in-glass diversity antenna system, was worthy of its environment. Base price on the S8 is $72,500, 10 grand more than the lowly A8. The test car also had a couple of cool options — the $850 solar sunroof, which supplies power to interior ventilation fans when the vehicle is parked in warm weather, and the “premium package,” which for a mere $700 gets you heated rear seats, a ski sack, power rear window sunshade and manual side rear window shades. It also had the $3,500 “nothing succeeds like excess” Alcantara supersuede and leather trim package upgrade, as if the standard leather fitments aren’t quite opulent. Total: $81,407, including freight and the luxury and guzzler taxes. If that sounds like a pretty good house down payment, I’ll see you in the lottery queue.

“The Gannett News Service”