Audi's Q7 arrived at America's SUV party just as the clean-up crew were packing up and heading for home. Despite the timing, questionable looks and hideous fuel efficiency (12/17), it's a hit. Year-to-date, Audi's moved 14,458 Q7s, outselling every other American Audi save the A4. Automotive News [AN, sub] reports that Audi's looking to capitalize on this success by fitting that Billy the Big Mouth Bass snout with a 3.6-liter, 280-hp engine mated to an electric engine. The Volkswagen Group's box fresh gas – electric parallel hybrid will up the Q7's mpg count to a claimed 23 mpg (highway? combine? AN doesn't say). If that doesn't float your boat– the Q7 is a heavy old girl– Ingolstadt will also offer a 50-state compliant 3.0-liter V-6 turbodiesel Q7 producing "about" 230 hp and 400 ft.-lbs. of torque. AN couldn't get an mpg number for the oil burner, but repeats Audi's claim of a 600-mile range. NOW will you take it off road?
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
The Q7 certainly is a hit where I live (wealthy area of NJ), as are all import luxury SUVs. I cringe every time I see one, it’s almost as ugly as the Lexus GX470, and worse than the Mercedes ML.
Oh, and in 90% of the cases, it’s driven by a single person, with no one in the back seats.
Gosh, I like many of these ugly cars… when I first saw a Q7 pull up on my wife’s aunt’s farm in North Dakota I was pretty impressed, I must admit. Maybe that’s because it was surrounded by like 5 F150’s…
In any case, diesel FTW, even if it isn’t so environmentally sound I like having more options.
More importantly, a slightly different (370ish ft lbs) version of that TDI engine is going into the next-gen A4, due in the US next fall. 0-60 in the low/mid 6s IIRC.
The new 1.8T gasser also looks good to me in the same platform: 160ish HP, 33ish MPG on the combined EU cycle.
Weird. I saw one of these on the way to work this morning and I just thought it looked a lot like a minivan.
For the price of one of these, you could probably get a gorgeous Infiniti FX35/45 and have change left over. Granted, you couldn’t seat 7 people (which I guess is important…) but you wouldn’t be sucking down a gallon of gas for every 12 miles, either.
I saw many of these in Austria and Switzerland this March. Quite surprising given the price of fuel.