Audi Q7 Night Black

Isn’t it funny how some things just work out the way you’ve always day dreamed about. For the past 12 months the wife and I have been looking at getting our second car, a much bigger second car to accommodate our plus one and her baby paraphernalia. The choice had been easy, the Jeep Grand Cherookee. It offered plenty of features as standard and almost ticked all the boxes then something happened.

The Audi Q7 happened. The Q7 had always been the car that we’ve looked at from afar and thought, that would be nice to have. With its unmistakable Audi daytime running lights and overall road presence, it was definitely hard to miss. Perhaps it is a little extravagant but not impractical, it has 7 seats and a big enough boot space to fit all of Isla’s bits and pieces. We chose the 3.0Tdi as this was what we wanted from the very beginning.

So after ten weeks, I can definitely say that it is the best car I’ve ever driven. It’s comfortable, it handles well for such a long wheelbase car and most importantly Isla loves it. The premium cars are known for their insane “options” pricing and the Q7 is no different. There are two options that this vehicle should have as a standard which it doesn’t, one is the driver memory seat feature and the other are the folding mirrors. Both these options cost over $2k+ , you can buy another second hand vehicle for that price. Then you have the Bang & Olufsen upgrade which is an Advanced 14 speaker system costing a whopping $14,000 AUD, the system we have installed in ours is a Bose 14 Speaker system so you can only imagine what a $14k upgrade may sound like. According to the Audi website the “BOSE AudioPilot® Noise Compensation Technology first measures the background noise within the interior. Unwanted noise is then filtered out by special algorithms. BOSE AudioPilot® Noise Compensation Technology distinguishes between desired music and unwanted interference. It compensates for interference automatically – without the need for any manual adjustment of the audio system. The advantage: the driver can concentrate better on the traffic and in-car listening becomes an unrivaled sound experience“. Sounds fancy pants right!!? The last but not least of the major options is the 21” rims, these will set you back a cool $10k. Unless money is of no concern, then these upgrades are a must have if you want a fully loaded Q7.

Performance wise, the 3.0 Litre turbocharged diesel engine is no slouch, especially when you slip it into the “S” mode, plant your foot slightly on the accelerator and hold on when the light turns green. For such an enormous car it does “haul ass” for the lack of a better term. Since I’ve been driving this car, I’ve had my fair share of a quick dash off the lights. The Audi Quattro which features torque vectoring ensures that all four wheels are planted when you put your foot down.

DRL – Audi’s famous Daytime Running Lights

[embedplusvideo height=”360″ width=”640″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1m8HBJv” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/T3bUT40vi_E?fs=1&vq=hd720″ vars=”ytid=T3bUT40vi_E&width=640&height=360&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=1&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5398″ /]

I’d like to think that I’m not brand loyal and have an open mind when it comes to other vehicles however now that we’ve owned this Audi Q7, I figure we may as well embrace it. I even went as far as buying Audi cufflinks. (aaaargh! that’s douchey)

One of the biggest downside of owning this car is that it’s BLACK – it is a pain in the ass to keep clean but when it is clean, the solid black paint is deep and glossy as pictured below.