Audi A7
Audi A7 55 TFSI quattro S line £58,040 WE SAY: THE NEW, A8 TECHENCRUSTED A7 IS AS ALOOF/ BEGUILING AS AUDIS GET
When Audi decided, about a year ago, to launch the MkII A7 in Cape Town, it could scarcely have known that come January, the Mother City would be three months from completely running out of water. Drought and inefciency has brought the Cape to the brink of running out of mankind’s most precious resource. 21 April is D-Day, and every billboard, motorway matrix sign and radio ad begs tourists and residents to save as much water as they can. Don’t fush. Ninety-second showers. No baths. It’s a modern day man-made crisis-in-waiting.
Doing more with less is a state of mind the car industry has embraced like few others in the last two decades. And the A7 is a remarkable example of it, in a few ways. Chiefy, it’s an A8 in all but name and headroom, which is a businessclass upgrade if you’re checking in from the old, A6-based version. The longer, mostly steel platform, the 48-volt hybrid drivetrain decoupler, and the Blade Runner airport lounge cabin has all been inherited from Audi’s ultimate limo into a car that starts over £10k cheaper. And you’ll not look like a hotel concierge driving it yourself.
So, you’re getting the latest Audi tech in a more rakish, sexier shape. And you lose out on practicality, right? It’s hardly a sacrifce. The new A7 has a touch more headroom, a 21mm legroom stretch and three adults can comfortably sit aboard massaging, cooled hides in the back, marvelling at the quality, while the two up front coo over the sheer amount of metal lavished around the cabin. Even
the paddles are (at last) wafer-thin fllets of tactile aluminium.
And what a cabin. I’m a staunch car-touchscreen atheist, because you can’t operate a touchscreen without looking at it like you can fumble for buttons and ratchet a clickwheel. Audi’s solution for when you’re, say, steering an 1,800kg express, is smartphonespec haptic feedback, with buzzes and ker-licks greeting your fngertips as you pinch, tap and smear greasy fngerprints across the crystal-clear menus. It’s an elegant solution that shows up the Range Rover Velar’s unfinching panes, but given you get the 12.3-inch Virtual Cockpit dials as standard with built-in nav, media and trip data, you need never really delve into the main menu screen. You’ll have to learn to like swipeable glass climate controls.
The car is so futuristic, in fact, it would’ve been a crime to sully it with the grumble of diesel ignition. There are two engines at launch, and the 3.0-litre TDI is not the car to save diesel. For the time being, it’s a more tax- (and real-world-) efcient machine, but its 8spd auto ’box and last-gen quattro system are tardy and the engine’s more vocal than Merc’s new-gen 6cyl diesels. And even worse news for the 50 TDI, as per the mindless Audi badging cock-up, is that the 55 TFSI (3.0-litre petrol to rational humans) is unfathomably smooth and hushed.
Cradled in dynamic engine mounts behind a new soundproof bulkhead, the V6 never emits more than a distant, supercharger-like whine from the 48v electrical ancillaries as they harness power to keep the lights on when it switches of. Which it will, like it or not, when the A7 senses you’re slowing below 13mph, or coasting between 34mph and 99mph. Forget cylinder deactivation – the entire V6 is narcoleptic.
It’s punchy too, and the standard seven-speed dual-clutch ’box is miles better than the auto, but there are no rewards for hustling an A7. A Panamera is £15k more because it can also do handling. The A7 is for cosseting, not entertaining, steering with glassy remoteness up front, and imperceptibly from the rear, if you spec the rear-steer axle which shaves a metre from the turning circle. I only got to try the top-spec air suspension, which is powerless to stop the 21in rims utterly knackering the ride. It’s too resonant, too crashy. Get an S line on 20s – the 19s provide the stance of a pool table.
It’s also – and I appreciate how unqualifed I am to comment – very cool, the A7. It’s an Audi that has, besides a world-class interior you’d delight in calling your second home, some presence, some divisiveness. And it exists in a more suave, cheaper-than-A8, rafsh space. There’s nothing wrong with a little more inconspicuous consumption.