Have Audi’s Q8 Designers Been Playing Too Much Table Soccer Between Sketches?

The Audi Q8 and its sporty SQ8 brother are due for a facelift and it appears to be like like Audi will take the chance to create extra differentiation between the pair.

Spy photographers have captured each variations testing in prototype kind and the obvious takeaway is the totally different grille designs seen on the plain Q8 and its SQ8 brother. The present vehicles all use a grille with distinguished vertical strakes that makes it appear to be they’re sporting a masks pinched from Batman nemesis Bane’s dressing-up field. However there’s no signal of that grille on any of the check vehicles.

As an alternative, the common Q8, which stands out due to its vibrant chrome window trim and big wheel arch gaps seems to be getting a grille impressed by desk soccer video games cupboards, although possibly that’s simply our creativeness. The SQ8, alternatively, swaps its vertical grille bars for an enormous honeycomb grille that’s nearly a caricature of a conventional sporty Audi grille.

Blurring the boundaries between the 2 fashions is what could possibly be a Vorsprung-trimmed model of the usual Q8. This automobile appears to be sporting the identical jumbo honeycomb grille because the SQ8, however lacks the real S-model’s quad exhaust setup, providing solely a single rectangular exhaust tailpipe finisher on both facet of the decrease bumper.

Associated: Audi Q8 Facelift Makes Spy Debut Hiding Delicate Modifications

Different visible adjustments for the facelifted SUVs heart on the subtly redesigned LED lights at both finish. The lamp models themselves will stay the identical dimension however the DRL signature will change to mark out the newer fashions. Inside upgrades will seemingly be restricted to minor trim and fabric tweaks and enhancements to the infotainment system and connectivity.

We’re not anticipating to see any enormous adjustments to the engine lineup, which at present consists of three.0-liter diesel and petrol powertrains for the Q8, and a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 making 500 hp (507 PS) for the SQ8. Each the Q8 and SQ8 already include 48-volt mild-hybrid tech, and the 55 TFSI PHEV accessible in Europe is certain to make the leap to the facelifted lineup.

On condition that the present Q8 was launched in 2018, and the way little disguise the vehicles are sporting we suspect they’ll be unveiled earlier than the top of this yr as 2024 fashions. That might make them solely barely later to market than the just-facelifted Mercedes GLE and soon-to-be-refreshed BMW X6.

Picture Credit: Baldauf and CarPix for CarScoops