Audi A5 Sportback 50 TDI Quattro Tiptronic

The A7’s grand-tourer formula hasn’t been rewritten, but it holds a great deal of promise

IT was said that, when Audi design boss Walter de Silva first saw the first A5, he shed a tear for its beauty. The previous A7 probably would’ve met with a similarly dewy-eyed appreciation, and had he stuck around for the private unveiling of the new A7, there would’ve been every chance of Walter having to wave off concerned fellow designers between heaving sobs; it really is a genuinely handsome car.

But the latest iteration of Audi’s largest grand tourer has to do more than just leave bystanders agog. There has to be some depth to explore beyond those looks and it seems as though there is … and, rather obtusely, there isn’t.

Cast as it was in a production staffed with rather conservatively styled stablemates, the original A7 cut a distinctive figure when it rolled onto showroom floors several years ago. Now, with Audi at least consenting to add some more visual verve to its latest offerings, albeit still within its traditional framework of sharp creases and single-frame grille, the new A7 manages to add considerable edge to its forebear’s stateliness. As hackneyed as it may sound, the A7 is one of those cars pictures do few favours. The bar-shaped brakelamp array that looked somewhat strained on the new A8 has finally found a more comfortable place on the A7’s slightly cinched tail – a sort of Bauhaus Barchetta, if you will – and the new car’s overall look is lower, wider and more purposeful than its safer forebear. Factor in the rakish profile, with its gracefully tapering roofline and the optional LED matrix head- and taillamp package that sees locking the car met with a Cylon-eye/ Wurlitzer-like light show and the new A7 is a properly striking car. Certainly, the number of craning necks and hurriedly brandished smartphones on our route through Cape Town and the surrounds attested to its attentiongetting looks.

While it would never match the visual drama of the exterior, the A7’s cabin is an exercise in upmarket simplicity and goes a long way to cementing Audi’s reputation for setting the perceived-quality benchmark in the premium segment. Opengrain wood inserts, cool-to-the-

touch satin-chrome trim finishes and satisfyingly dense plastics are the mediums for a cabin that’s about as clean and solid as you could hope for. The centrepiece is the brace of touchscreens that almost appears to blend with the gloss-black upper dash panel and now house the majority of ancillaries – including the switch for the hazard lights – as part of an expanded MMI infotainment system. The transition from analogue to digital controls hasn’t been met with unanimous approval, but this system’s haptic feedback at least accompanies each prod of an icon with a corresponding “click”, thereby affording some sort of tactile response while de-cluttering the dash.

The seats are sympathetically bolstered, allowing someone as broad in the beam as myself to feel held in but not unflatteringly compressed, and their low-slung siting, coupled with the high door shoulder line, makes you feel as though you’re planted within the car rather than just perched atop it.

Cabin and utility space is impressive; the sitting-behinda-six-footer test revealed plenty of legroom, while headroom was also fairly generous, despite that gracefully canted roofline. Although fairly shallow, the boot stretches a good way into the A7’s innards and serves up a claimed 535 litres of luggage space; enough for the obligatory pair of golf bags.

Hit the open road with the 3,0-litre V6 turbodiesel in the 50 TDI and the experience is pure grand tourer. The engine is mechanically refined and impressively quiet, no doubt aided by the fact that the vehicle is stuffed to the gills with sound-deadening material and thick glazing, making the A7 a serene cruiser.

Weighing in at a scale-creaking 1,9 tonnes, the A7 is not exactly light, but it certainly doesn’t feel leaden. Swift directional changes are met with some expected body roll, but the chassis quickly straightens itself out and the ride – something that invoked the ire of journalists hailing from parts no doubt paved with billiard-table smooth blacktop – is impressively composed, even when contending with the low-profile tyres fitted to our S line-equipped test car and some notoriously patchy road surfaces heading out into the countryside.

The steering, although responsive, is on the slightly leaden side and becomes especially tight when the Drive Select system is hooked into its most dynamic setting. Thankfully, the A7’s all-wheel-drive setup’s ability to push torque in a balanced fashion, both laterally and longitudi-

nally, means that the ponderous nose-heaviness that sometimes afflicted the previous car has been largely addressed.

The 210 kw and 620 N.m outputs are about par for units from similar rivals. But in true Audi fashion, the demure soundtrack and the AWD system’s ability to rope in all unruliness mean that the A7 sometimes lulls you into thinking there’s not that much firepower at play.

Although the throttle mapping is on the leisurely side, a boon for highway cruising, booting the accelerator and taking a glance at the digital speedometer will dispel such notions, making Audi’s claimed 5,7-second 0-100 km/h time seem entirely plausible. Audi’s powertrain engineers claimed this model’s 620 N.m of torque would place too much strain on the sevenspeed dual-clutch transmission used in the petrol, necessitating the use of Audi’s eight-speed torque-converter unit, and it’s a great match. Left to its own devices, this transmission serves up smooth, well-measured shifts perfect for round-town trick- ling. It’s a little less alert when it comes to manually shifting, but with the amount of torque on offer and the drivetrain’s ability to smooth it around the car means it’s a minor misgiving in an otherwise polished package.

So it’s brisk, stable and refined … yet driving it in conditions ranging from the fast, sweeping roads near Cape Point and Rooi-els, not to mention the soul-destroying roadworks everywhere else, there’s the feeling Audi hasn’t totally filled this stylish and beautifully crafted vessel to its capacity. This isn’t the damning of faint praise often levelled at a motoring-journalist fraternity that’s assumed to be sent to slumberland by anything with less than 300 kw on tap, but rather a feeling that the A7 is a consummate cruiser. The driving experience it serves up isn’t far removed from many of its stablemates.

If you like your grand tourers to stick verbatim to the label, the A7’s arresting looks, rock-solid build and serene nature are most appealing. On the flipside of this yet-unrealised potential, there’s the exciting notion the A7 is a solidly engineered prelude to some potentially promising S/RS powerful models, the latter being earmarked for a tuned version of the firm’s thumping 4,0-litre biturbo V8.

Its looks, build and serene nature are most appealing