Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
The closest thing to perfection
I’LL GET to nature, cars and perfection a little later, but the first time I saw what the Audi Q7 was capable of (not just a luxury Sandton mall crawler), my son and I were on a trip to the Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, with a route that took us to Botswana, a couple of years ago.
Once we were in the park, the roads looked like they had last seen any form of maintenance on the day that Ian Smith took control of Rhodesia, so it was a slow and bumpy trek, but the older-model Q7 had no trouble completing it.
Since then I’ve been at the wheel of a few of its stablemates, but opening the door and sliding in behind the wheel of the new Q7 is probably akin to meeting the love of your life for the first time.
It’s certainly not cheap, coming in at close to R1 million, so most people who could afford it would be older , but you’d be mistaken if you thought it wouldn’t appeal to the youngsters.
We have two university students and a matric son who were at home during the time we had the car, and the Q7 not only blew their minds technologically, but the 3- litre 183kW turbo diesel’s performance in sport mode on a secluded road had them asking for more.
In part this is because at just under two tons it is fairly light for its size. It is also due to the combination of the Quattro centre differential – which distributes power electronically to all four wheels as and when needed by selective torque control– a body that hunkers down by 15mm when moving at speed, brilliant adaptive air suspension and, most of all, an eightspeed tiptronic gearbox designed as a torque- converter transmission that allows gears to change as fluidly as you could wish.
Inside, there’s nothing wanting. Everything is as you would expect of German engineering and quality, with dials and switches that are easy to get to and comprehend, nooks and crannies to store things, electronic seats and an almost cavernous feel.
The press information says the Q7 has the most spacious interior in the premium SUV market. Even with the third row of seats up, you get 295 litres.
When the second row of seats is folded down, there’s 2 075 litres, which we got to use on a Saturday morning to move supplies for my wife’s eventing company. These were for a themed event that needed 75 or so scatter cushions, and we managed to squeeze all of them in.
Rounding off the inside was the piece of equipment that had the youngsters going gaga – the infotainment and AudiConnect.
It would probably take me months to get to grips with everything, but the three of them spent at least two hours trying out some of the “coolest” gadgets on four wheels.
The MMi navigation plus with MMI touch includes a DVD drive, two card readers, flash memory, sound system, music interface with two USB ports, Bluetooth interface, smartphone voice control, emails from your cellphone that it reads out aloud, and, and, and…
The test drive version had the optional “virtual cockpit”, where analogue instruments are replaced with a full-colour digital 12.3-inch TFT screen that offers a choice of views.
Rear-seat entertainment is also taken care of with a tablet.
The tablet has an Android operating system that supports near field communication and which can access the internet and more.
So what has this got to do with nature, cars and perfection? If you’re out in the bush, this Audi is probably the closest thing you’ll get to a perfectly shaped veld flower after a thunderstorm.