As Depeche Mode’s Enjoy The Silence thumped through the A8’s splendid 14-speaker Bang & Olufsen system that night, everything seemed to come into place. The crescendo of the 12-cylinders’ firing order and the British group’s bass inducing track were acting in unison and the scenery started to resemble a Roman road lined by tall cypress trees on either side. I was literally ‘enjoying the silence’, isolated from what lay outside the toughened glass – the engine’s soft beat and the resonance from the 1,000-watt system acting as mind dampers. Time, it seemed, had teleported me into a different orbit. Time and the W12.
Ironical as it may seem, the W12 never began its life in a saloon, especially given how refined it is. In fact, the Volkswagen group had other ideas, one that talked about a supercar. As the world gawped at the W12 supercar concept at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1997, the writing was on every journalist’s PDA – VW was going to develop a supercar, or so it seemed. Realisation dawned much later when the Bentley Continental GT and the Volkswagen Phaeton became the W12’s first recipients. The tale got murkier for our pen-pushing lot as cars like the Flying Spur, the VW Touareg and this, the Audi A8, started to sport W12 badges. Nobody even looked back to ask if VW was still going to develop that supercar, given by then VW’s appetite for acquiring supercar firms.
What everyone however appreciated was what buzzed under the hood. The highly complicated engine – one that was developed to massage Ferdinand Piech’s self-esteem – turned out to be a cracker. If the road were Vietnam, the W12 was its Napalm, pounding whole continents under its Pirelli P-Zero feet. Cities? Oh, they were just a matter of a sneeze! The mating of two VR6s to make the W12 was probably more complicated than the unification of FDR and GDR, but this, the one on the A8 W12, is the least complicated of them all. Unlike its Bentley brethren, it doesn’t have twin turbochargers and no intercoolers and therefore doesn’t register turbo lag if you anticipated it. Instead, it does it all in one big hush! It’s a bit like a nuclear reactor in a sub, so silent that the only way of knowing it’s around is when its Xenon discharge lamps blind you.
But it isn’t so much about the car as it’s about this engine. According to company literature, the engine dimensions are so compact that it’s probably the only production 12-cylinder engine in the world to accommodate four-wheel drive running gear with the engine hanging up front. From the Bulgarian bearded grille to firewall, it measures just 51.3 cm, while occupying 69 cm of space between the wheel arches. This second generation W12 on the Audi utilises the same bank angle of 15 degrees as the original VW VR6s from the 1990s, to help construct the engine. The VR6s’ asymmetric configuration means the bank angle between the two engines is just 72 degrees – making it just as compact as some V8s. Unlike the transversely placed VR6 in the Audi TT, the W12 is placed longitudinally. Yet, it occupies the space of just four and a half cylinders in length – enough to ensure the A8L doesn’t need a hideous extension of its regal nose. But the W12’s brilliance doesn’t stop there. Since the two banks are not in the classic three bank layout, it means there are two connecting rods per crank pin instead of three. Moreover, with the VR6s inherently designed to behave more like straight sixes with their next to no-splay angles between the pistons, the W12 once again comes across as a balanced engine. And to carry that further, Audi have used lighter pistons and con rods. Built using magnesium and aluminium, the VW group have helped reduce the centre of gravity and clamped the A8’s kerb weight at just under two tonnes.
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