Yahoo Autos The Audi SQ7 Has V8 Power and Performance Handling As Well As Three-Row Seating
Who really needs a 500-horsepower high-performance V8-powered crossover utility vehicle? Lots of people. You know who you are.
“We have a ton of customers who have been waiting for V8s in this car,” said our friend the Audi PR spokesguy.
Asked to define “ton,” he had no specific figure to share, but we’ll say “ton” equals “a lot.”
And who can blame all those eager customers? See, the SQ7 not only has 500 horsepower, does 0-60 in 4.3 seconds and offers an electronically limited top speed of 155 mph, but you get four-wheel steering for quicker turns and a 40:60 front-to-rear torque split for always-sporty performance.
And allow us to recommend that as long as you’re getting the SQ7 instead of the Q7, you might as well go whole hog and order the Sport Package, too. That adds: Active Roll Stabilization, done by electromechanical twisty things that crank the anti-roll bars as you corner with glee; quattro sport active rear differential, which sends rear-wheel torque to the rear wheel getting the most grip; and some showy “design enhancements” that you probably don’t need but which let everyone know how cool you really are.
So we’re agreed then? You’re getting the SQ7 with the Sport Package, right? Good.
Because 500 hp is nice, but you have to be able to do something with it. The regular old Q7, sure it’s nice, but it comes with either a 248-hp 2.0-liter four or a 335-hp 3.0-liter six. The four-cylinder takes almost seven seconds to get to 60. Seven seconds! That is not you. You are a playah.
There are drawbacks to the SQ7.
“Obviously they are not the cheapest cars on Earth,” admitted suspension chief engineer Christian Schimmel (who, apropos of nothing, bears a remarkable resemblance, both in looks and manner, to a German Hugh Grant).
Indeed, while you can get into a Q7 for an entirely reasonable $55,795, the SQ7 starts at (brace yerself, Bridgette) $85,795. And the SQ7 that I had for a day stickered at a fairly steep $91,640. So yeah, not the cheapest car on Earth. And the one I had didn’t even have the Sport Package that I have already convinced you to buy. Mine did have summer tires, though, in my case Goodyear F1 4x4s made in Germany measuring 285/40R21. They were mounted on optional Audi Sport 10-spoke Star design Bi-color black finish wheels.
The whole package looked nice but at the same time was also a little stealthy. You could drive really fast in this thing then slow down when you saw the Highway Patrol and just tool on by looking like a soccer mom or dad on your way to practice. At least that was what I did.
In these weird times we’re all living in, instead of driving this over Hogschnitzel Pass in Das Alps I got the car at 8:00 a.m. in flat and very suburban Los Angeles. The guys who dropped it off (old pal Larry S. Taulbee!) said they’d be back for it at 5:00. But L.A. has some pretty good roads just outside of it and, unlike the Alps in summer, our roads aren’t overcrowded, at least not mid-week when I had the SQ7.
So I headed straight up to my favorite local mountain road in the high (five feet nine inches) and mighty (500 hp, remember?) SQ7. Now, I did have those Goodyear “summer” tires but without the Sport Package to really exploit the things I admit to feeling a little bit hobbled. At the same time, there is something to be said for a passive anti-roll bar, at least in terms of driving feel. With active bars you are left to assume the lateral forces acting on your vehicle. Passive bars let the car lean over and let you know exactly how much you are pushing it in the corners. Active bars on BMWs and in particular AMG Mercedes tend to feel a little artificial. With this setup, I got some roll with each corner, which felt more natural. So even though I have already gotten you to agree to buy the Sport Package, maybe you can get away with the passive anti-roll bars and still have fun.
Maybe, but not necessarily. Because with the setup I had, the weak link turned out to be the Goodyears. Even though they were supposedly grippier rubber than the all-seasons you can also get with this ride, they did tend to squeal away when pushed hard. Not just squeal, but slide. The sliding was progressive, and they gave you lots of warning as they were breaking loose, but they nonetheless did slide, more than I would have expected in an SQ7. (Maybe the SQ in SQ7 stands for Squeal?)
Life, and suspension geometry, is full of compromises.
“A typical customer does not corner at the limit all the time,” said Schimmel.
Maybe not the typical customer, but this customer had only nine hours in the car.
Apart from the suspension, there was the matter of those 500 hp. They were paired with 568 pound feet of torque. This in a vehicle that weighs a saftig 5,291 pounds. That’s a lot of curb weight in this performance equation. But 500 hp can pretty much overcome anything. And for it, this 5,291 pounds was no match. I have no doubt about Audi’s claim of 4.3 seconds for 0-60. Suffice to say you will not be complaining about the power and torque here.
Indeed, you may also discover that this is an entirely practical investment for a performance car. It seats seven full-sized adults in three rows. As I was descending my favorite mountain road, I came across a bunch of hikers who were apparently lost and looking for their car. It turned out, after speaking with them, that they had taken a wrong turn on what was supposed to be a leisurely hike and wound up instead ascending six miles up a canyon, whereupon they found the highway and started walking back. They hoped to speed their return to civilization by hitchhiking. I thought briefly and with some paranoia that Audi had planted them here to demonstrate the SQ7’s three-row seating configuration. Indeed, I was ready to load them all into the vehicle, since this was a three-row CUV, when they said all they wanted was for one of their membership to get a ride to their car and he would return in it to pick them up. Before saying, “Aw just all o’ y’all climb in, I got three rows of seating, all wrapped in Valcona leather with contrast diamond stitching and S embossing,” I realized they were all going to be pretty sweaty and stinky and I didn’t want to return the car to Larry S. Taulbee smelling like dirty hiker, so I just drove one. But I could have driven all of them.
Later in the day, I actually drove a high-schooler to high school to pick up school supplies, thus completing the perfect crossover performance day for an Audi SQ7. No doubt all the other high school parents were impressed with the SQ7’s Arctic White paint job and Audi Sport 10-spoke wheels. Or maybe they didn’t notice. Vanity is just insecurity masked as arrogance.
Sure enough, at almost exactly 5:00 p.m. Larry S. Taulbee picked up the SQ7, leaving me to contemplate life in my more mundane fleet of usually working automobiles. I think the best thing about the SQ7 was the 500-hp V8. I would have liked to have driven one with both the Sport Package and the summer tires. But the way they had the fleet set up you got one or the other. So I don’t know what to recommend to you, the well-heeled and discerning driver, now. In general, I recommend the sport package without the cosmetic options and without the various “Assistance” packages. Those latter things just beep all the time and irritate me. So go with that.
On Sale: now
Base Price: $85,795
Powertrain: 4.0-liter V8, 8-speed automatic transmission, AWD
Output: 500 hp; 568 lb-ft
Wheelbase: 117.9 inches
Length/Width/Height: 199.6/77.6/68.5 inches
Curb Weight: 5,291 lb
Fuel Economy (EPA City/Highway/Combined): 15/21/17 mpg
Pros: The fastest SUV in the suburbs
Cons: Obviously, not the cheapest car on Earth
