2015 Audi S8 review notes - AutoWeek

Audi’s S8 is spectacular -- minus active lane assist. DIGITAL EDITOR ANDREW STOY: Thanks in part to our long-term S7 , dropping into the S8 was like visiting an old friend -- the familiar V8 bark and smooth and incredibly capable brakes. That’s how long I fought with the innocuous sounding “driver assistance package. More specifically, active lane assist. This should be aggressive lane assist. Otherwise pleasant drives turned into a wrestling match between driver and S8 as the car fought lane changes, reasonable drift and every other maneuver that deviated from the car’s preprogrammed notions of where it was supposed to be on the road. Active lane assist does not assist. “Simply turn it off,” right. After fiddling with the lane keeping menu in MMI, thinking I’d disengaged the system (I hadn’t), a contact at Audi confirmed active lane assist can be disabled with a button at the end of the turn signal stalk. Once active lane assist is euthanized, the S8 is one of the finest Teutonic sport sedans anywhere. Build quality, materials and ergonomics are all typical Audi -- in other words, excellent. Source: autoweek.com