Audi to Offer Oil Burner and Hybrid Q7
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?
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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.