Damien O’carroll.

Do we need another enormous SUV on the market? The queue of buyers for the triple-turbo, 900Nm $175k SQ7 say yes. By

It does seem that, when it comes to top-spec highperformance European cars, too much is never enough for us here in New Zealand.

We constantly lead the world in sales of German hotrods on a percentage of sales-versus-thestandard-car basis. Cars with letters like M, AMG, S and RS on their bootlids all punch far above their weight for market share.

So it should come as no real surprise that the latest excessive German express to land on these shores managed to become a success before it even rolled off the boat.

The Audi SQ7 is proving remarkably popular locally, with more than 50 orders received already and Audi NZ boss Dean Sheed confidently predicting more than 100 sales of the uber-suv in its first year on sale here.

To put this in perspective, most other SUVS in the SQ7’S $175,900 price range sell 20-30 units per year.

Yes, $175,900 is a lot of money for an SUV. But then you do get a lot of car with the SQ7.

The SQ7 is the second vehicle in Audi’s SUV range to get the S-treatment, with the SQ5 representing more than half of Q5 sales locally.

While the SQ5 gets a twin-turbo 3.0-litre diesel V6 that pumps out 230kw and 650Nm, the SQ7 has something far, far sillier under its bonnet: an all-new and totally belligerent 4.0-litre diesel V8 with three turbos, 320kw of power and a colossal 900Nm of torque.

Yes, you did read that right: the SQ7 has three turbos and one of