It’s not often that you can drive a vehicle that costs more than some houses, but slip behind the wheel of the all-wheel drive, 360-hp Audi S8 and you will. The S8 is the performance version of Audi’s top-of-the-line luxury cruiser, a vehicle that does battle with BMW’s 7 Series and Mercedes’ S-Class, each of which is better known to the general public. It’s quick, lighter than its competitors – credit the aluminum spaceframe and outer panels – and nicely detailed. Unfortunately, it suffers from an unfocused personality.

Despite the sporting pretensions, the S8 is a surprisingly comfortable car. So much so, in fact, that I am convinced this should be the base wheel/tire/suspension set up. Sure, minor tremors enter the cabin on some uneven surfaces, but the overall ride/handling compromise is surprisingly supple. And adopting this tuning as standard would give Audi’s engineers, designers, and marketers a crisp, clear enunciation of the car’s personality and intentions.

Then, perhaps, we could dispense with the overly fussy radio, or see to it that the driver’s outside mirror had enough travel to allow a setting where objects coming up from behind moved smoothly from the inside mirror to the outside, and didn’t appear simultaneously in both. Or someone could take the time to make the Tiptronic transmission worth using, and place the +/- gate toward the driver with a detent that doesn’t allow the lever to flop across the gate during hard cornering.

Just don’t change the beautiful aluminum outside mirror housings, or ruin the decent (23 mpg in mostly highway driving) mileage. Put controls for the sound system on the steering wheel, give me more than one front cup holder and scattered storage space, and increase the number of CDs the stereo can swallow to at least six. Don’t lose the intimate feel of the car, but update the look. And get your finance arm to write me a mortgage that will cover the $78,975 as-tested price.