Remember high school? When things were in or out, people were cool or uncool, and nothing mattered more than how much others liked you? Imagine if you’d carried that desperate need to be liked well into adulthood, until it clawed your very sense of self away and turned you into someone who exists only for others. Think about the person you’d grow up to be.
You’d hold doors for everyone, no matter how many. You’d learn to be good at karaoke, but not so good that people don’t want to go with you. You’d have flash and sparkle, tricks to draw all eyes to you, without a single shred of meaning beneath to make those people want to stay. You’d end up a people pleaser, much like the Audi Q7.
Full Disclosure: Audi shipped me out to Utah to drive four crossovers (and ride one mountain bike) all at once. The Q7, SQ7, Q8, and SQ8 have all been lightly updated, and between the smaller changes and shorter drives these reviews likely won’t be the 1,600-word epics you’ve come to expect from my byline. Audi paid for my transportation, lodging, and food.
The Audi Q7 desperately wants to be all things to all people. It wants to offer the space of an X7, the driving dynamics of an X5, and the comfort of a GLE — all for less cost than any of them, with a starting MSRP of $60,500. It’s an admirable goal, and one that stands a good chance of making the ultimate parent car. All the room in the world, with none of the drawbacks.
In its people-pleasing, however, the Q7 doesn’t stop there. The interior is a wonderful place to be: Every rear seat gets child seat anchors, while the fronts (in the topmost Prestige trim) get massagers. The optional Bang & Olufsen stereo sings, the infotainment gets any number of Audi-supplied themes complete with interior accent lighting, and the acoustic glass prevents wind noise from ever rattling your poor ears. The Audi Q7, on the inside, should be fantastic.
The exterior, with regard to styling, is in the eye of the beholder. We’re approaching the 10th year of the Q7’s second generation, which means some of the aesthetic choices are either showing their age or slowly reentering vogue with the cycles of fashion. The front and rear ends, however, have been worked over for this latest facelift. A new fascia, new (real) exhaust pipes, and Audi’s favorite: Fancy lights.
Audi loves its Matrix Design lights, and is all too happy to tell you all the functions and signatures they’re capable of — if only American laws would change to actually allow them. As it stands, the lights can display all kinds of fancy animations when the car is unlocked, but aren’t functionally different when driving.
That, there, is the crux of people-pleasing — all the surface level likability, none of the substance below that. The Q7, in its desperation to be everything for everyone, never forges its own identity as a vehicle. Not as luxurious as a Mercedes, not as performance-oriented as a BMW, just there in the middle.
The Q7’s fancy, flashy lights are limited by American road laws. Its infotainment themes, supposedly a demonstration of Audi’s commitment to advancement through technology, aren’t included in the purchase price — they’re $13 JPEGs with matching interior accent light colors, or $18 if you want one for your favorite soccer team.
The Q7 does many things well, particularly when you consider its price point, but it does few things uniquely. It lacks a killer app, something to make it truly worth seeking out over the competition. The 335-horsepower V6 in my tester was powerful enough, the transmission shifted well enough, the steering had enough feel and precision, but there’s nothing exemplary in the driving experience that you won’t get from Bavaria. Similarly, among all those interior luxuries like lights and child seat anchors, there’s nothing that beats out the comfort of a more singlemindedly luxury-oriented competitor.
Audi, it seems, is in those high school years itself. It wants tech to be its differentiator, its killer app, but tech is cheap — adding software-based features to a car that’s already loaded with computers is trivial compared to adding, say, a bigger engine or plusher suspension. Without a solid core identity for the brand, it acts like a teenager by doing whatever it can to please whoever will give it the time of day. And, like that high schooler, the Q7 is perfectly pleasant and nice to interact with. It just doesn’t give you much reason to stick around.
