AUDI Q7 V12 TDI LONG-TERM TEST
Black magic
Now here’s a blast from the past: a 2.6-tonne SUV powered by Audi ’s 6.0-litre, 500 horsepower diesel V12 . So what did Matt Prior make of his new daily driver?
PHOTOGRAPHY LUC LACEY
Audi’s R10 race car, which ran a diesel V12 (although not this one), won the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Helpful for marketing.
In traditional comedic terms, I think this would be known as ‘a wheeze’. I’d just stepped out of several months with an enjoyable Polestar 2 electric car as my daily driver when they said: “Look here, Prior, now you should spend a couple of months with something that’s absolutely not a new EV.”
The “absolutely not a new EV” in question was an Audi Q7 with a 6.0-litre V12 turbodiesel engine and a fuel tank so vast that one filling station’s pump would give up on it before it was full.
When we last drove a Q7 V12, we partially concluded it was “cataclysmically out of step with its time”, and that time was 2012. So how about 11 years on, when someone will let down your tyres for simply having the audacity to drive any SUV, let alone a 2635kg one with a 5934cc engine? If it was out of place back then, how does it feel today?
It was impossible to ignore the call of the autobahn