The auto trade has a well-kept secret: Efficiency SUVs don’t truly make any sense, and might be worse than their non-performance variants. They are often punishingly stiff, outrageously costly, and little higher on monitor than their commonplace counterparts as a consequence of all that weight that’s nonetheless sitting excessive off the bottom.
If there’s a great solution to make a efficiency SUV, it’s to place all of your ability factors into the engine — maintain the suspension plush for freeway rides, however let a large engine make passing zones a breeze. It’s a formulation that Audi hints at with the brand new SQ7, and comes so near mastering.
Full Disclosure: Audi shipped me out to Utah to drive 4 crossovers (and trip one mountain bike) abruptly. The Q7, SQ7, Q8, and SQ8 have all been calmly up to date, and between the smaller adjustments and shorter drives these opinions doubtless gained’t be the 1,600-word epics you’ve come to count on from my byline. Audi paid for my transportation, lodging, and meals.
The Audi SQ7 is, merely, the efficiency oriented Q7. Identical three rows of seating, identical 2025 replace to the fascia and lighting, identical infotainment that may allow you to change your wallpaper in change for 13 actual life American {dollars} per JPEG. It’s comfy, it’s sensible, it’s a pleasant place to spend your time.
Solely, the SQ7 is solely nicer than the Q7 on which it’s based mostly. Whereas the inside might not change a lot, past some accent stitching and an admittedly fairly sick pink seatbelt, the powertrain is improved in two very significant methods: The engine and the transmission.
In commonplace trim, the Audi Q7 is powered by a two-liter inline 4 cylinder making 268 horses and 273 lb-ft of torque. The tester I drove swapped out the 4 for a three-liter V6, which bumped energy figured as much as 335 horsepower and 369 lb-ft — higher, to make certain, however nonetheless a quantity that leaves me wanting. The SQ7, with its four-liter V8 delivering 500-horsepower and 568 lb-ft of torque, is the candy spot.
Calling a 500-horsepower SUV some kind of Goldilocks compromise is a declare solely an auto journalist accustomed to sporty vehicles might make, nevertheless it’s one I can justify. Merely put, crossovers are heavy now — the SQ8 clocks in at 5,291 lbs by itself, earlier than you begin filling it with passengers. Add in your loved ones and your gas, and also you’re some really critical weight.
Take that weight, and place it on an uphill freeway. Stick it behind a slow-moving semi, and set the entire scene within the oxygen-poor excessive altitudes of Utah. All of the sudden, 500 horsepower isn’t some absurd determine discovered on a supercar — it’s virtually a necessity to execute a protected go.
That state of affairs additionally exhibits the advantages of Audi’s different change with the SQ7: The transmission. The SQ7 truly makes use of the identical ZF 8HP gearbox as the usual Q mannequin — and seemingly each different automobile on this planet — nevertheless it’s been massively retuned for extra responsiveness. The place downshifts within the Q7 had been sluggish and unreliable, right here they’re… higher.
In the event you anticipated that sentence to finish in perfection, you’re trying within the mistaken phase. Crossovers don’t want lightning-fast hyper-responsive shifts, and many house owners would doubtless be aggravated at such habits in the actual world. What a efficiency crossover actually wants is a gearbox that’s simply responsive sufficient to fade into the background, a degree of frustration neither for its eagerness nor for its sluggishness. In that, Audi hits the mark.
The SQ7 is just not an RS mannequin, it’s not the highest of Audi’s crossover efficiency pantheon. It is not going to set a blistering Nurburgring time, it’ll by no means stun on the drag strip. However, with between its energy and the best way that energy is delivered, the SQ7 turns into a automobile the place the drivetrain fades into the background — attuned to what you’re searching for from a automobile, merely doing no matter you ask in consolation and with out criticism.
That center floor, that half-commitment to efficiency, makes for a automobile that’s much better to make use of day by day than an ultra-stiff BMW M crossover. It’s not overwhelming, it’s not even notably spectacular, nevertheless it’s precisely what a efficiency SUV must be. God assist us, 500 horsepower is now a benchmark for crossovers.
