Audi Q7 4.2 TDI S line review
by David Finlay (19 July 2007)
There are few things less fashionable these days than admitting to an admiration of SUVs, and the larger the SUV in question the more likely you are to be frowned and tutted at. They don't come much more monstrous than the Audi Q7, so I appreciate I may be at risk of a flaming here, but I don't care. The Q7 is a superb SUV, and that's all there is to it.
Although it's named (coincidentally, I imagine) after a Spike Milligan television series from the 1970s, there's nothing about the Q7 which will raise so much as a chuckle the first time you see it. Frankly, it looks as if it wants to kill you.
And I suppose it could, but that's less likely to happen than you might imagine. That sturdy front end looks like something out of a Euro NCAP tester's nightmare, but lean against any of the front panels and you find that (fortunately for any pedestrian you may accidentally make contact with) there isn't much to them. They bend easily as you apply pressure, and spring back into shape on release.
You'll be pleased to hear that this is not the most fun you can have with a Q7. The really astonishing thing about this vast brute is that it is such a delight to drive. For a start, it is unbelievably quiet; the big 4.2-litre V8 turbo diesel engine under the bonnet of the test car never requires you to raise your voice, tyre rumble is kept to a minimum, and there is an astonishing lack of wind noise considering just how much air the shape has to elbow out of the way. How do they do that?
That whispering diesel produces 322bhp, so there's plenty of performance - a top speed of 146mph and 0-62mph in a hot hatchlike 6.4 seconds. The 3.0 TDI (subject of a previous road test) has 230bhp, and that feels more than adequate, but the 4.2 is something else again. It seems ridiculous to describe a car like the Q7 as "spritely", but the 4.2 comes close to it.
The 4.2 is nearly £10,000 more expensive than the 3.0, but if the official combined fuel economy figures (25.4mpg versus 26.9mpg) are anything to go by, it might not be a great deal costlier to feed. Even without having done any careful measuring in either case, I'd still say that the difference seems about right - the 4.2 certainly had no trouble covering over 500 miles without needing a top-up.
The considerable extra power might have been a problem, but it isn't. The extra 92bhp over the 3.0 is absorbed brilliantly by the chassis, and there is no sense of the car struggling with it. I've already compared the Q7's combination of bulk and grace with that of Oliver ("Laurel and") Hardy, and I'm happy to do so again now - take a look at the dance sequence in the film Way Out West and you'll see exactly what I mean.
It is quite typical of Audi that it should have produced a car with such enormous levels of grip, even if it still comes as a surprise in something with so much weight so high up.
Ride quality is not such a strong point across the Audi range, but it's another positive feature of the Q7. You're always aware that the car is heavy, but it does not feel like a typical SUV.
The ride and handling are adjustable for different circumstances. Of the five options, I think Comfort is the one that the engineers really intended, and the others are variants of it. On a fast but twisty A-road I switched to Dynamic, but the considerable deterioration in ride didn't seem to be justified by a great improvement in handling, and it wasn't long before I'd gone back to the Comfort setting. Still, the choice is there.
The Q7 is at its most intimidating when you're going very slowly, because that's when you have to be most aware that it is very wide and - since it uses an extended version of the platform on which the Volkswagen Touareg and Porsche Cayenne are built - very long. Visibility isn't too bad, which helps, but you'd be well advised to pay extra for the optional Technology Package, because this includes a reversing camera, and I can't tell you how much easier that makes manoeuvring in car parks.
There is, of course, a very great deal of room for the front occupants, plus three more in the central row of seats, and all five can travel in considerable comfort as long as you don't start putting the generous amount of grip to the test.
On top of this, the Q7 is actually a seven-seater, though the rearmost perches are not suitable for people with legs and can be described by the delicate term "for occasional use only". Audi won't supply these seats if you don't want them, but you don't get any money back (which comes under another delicate term, "no-cost delete option").
Luggage space? Yeah, lots. 775 litres of it with five seats up, extending to 2035 litres if you fold down the middle seats and load the car to the roof. That's quite a lot of room, especially since the rear axle of the quattro four-wheel drive system forces the boot floor up to upper thigh level; heavy things could be tricky to load for that reason, though at least the tailgate opening is very large.
The tailgate itself is powered and requires very little effort to use. Make sure you close it by pressing the relevant button rather than by hand, though. I got this wrong at the press launch of another Audi and was reprimanded with some vigour, since it could have resulted in expensive damage to the system.
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