Our thought of luxurious adjustments usually. What qualifies as indulgent and trendy in a single second can shift within the subsequent. These cycles appear to be dashing up yearly.
That doesn’t at all times work out in our favor.
Nice eating close to my Washington, D.C.-area dwelling, as an illustration, now means tasting menus filled with wave after wave of tiny dishes made with elements from many cultures. I take pleasure in them and have realized lots from them. However high quality eating used to imply an ideal steak. And I’m nonetheless excited once I discover that.
What does this need to do with the 2025 Audi SQ7, you ask? Rather a lot. To clarify, I’d have to sit down you within the driver’s seat, ask you to activate the seat massager and regulate the 23 audio system of the Bang & Olufsen sound system, assist you to discover Dynamic Mode, and watch as you mashed the accelerator and heard that superb twin-turbo V8 snarl to life.
The 2025 SQ7 is, in fact, a 2025 mannequin yr automobile. However if you happen to spend time test-driving its rivals, you’ll notice it doesn’t look like one. It’s nearer to what the automotive business discovered trendy when this era of Audi’s Q7 luxurious sedan debuted … again within the 2016 mannequin yr. Audi will possible change it subsequent yr (although they haven’t formally introduced that but).
The SQ7 is the high-performance, ultra-luxury model of a 7-seat SUV design practically a decade outdated. America’s tastes change sooner than that. However strap in, hearth it up, and I guess you’d find it irresistible.
My tester carried the tech-oriented Status bundle, the athletic-oriented S Sport bundle, the posh bundle’s added leather-based, that 23-speaker system, 22-inch black wheels, and the Black Optic bundle — in different phrases, all the things.
It retails for $116,640, together with a $1,195 vacation spot price. Steep, sure. However that is filet mignon seared by a grasp.
An Engine for the Historical past Books, with MPG to Match
Most rivals have gone to some type of electrification — not less than a light hybrid system, if not a full plug-in hybrid possibility. The SQ7 is old-school.
This drivetrain unites a 500-horsepower, 4.0-liter biturbo engine with an 8-speed computerized transmission, good for 568 lb-ft. of torque. Audi claims a 0-to-60 mph time of 4 seconds, however some testing organizations have managed a little bit beneath that.
It sends energy via Audi’s by-now-legendary quattro all-wheel-drive system.
Let’s get one factor clear — Audi’s 4.0-liter V8 and the quattro system every deserve to sit down on plinths within the automotive corridor of fame (a factor that exists solely in our collective imaginations). Uniting them is motive sufficient for this automobile to exist.
The engine’s soundtrack is sonorous and deep. Its acceleration is brutal in one of the simplest ways. It could’t make a 3-row household SUV really feel small, however there’s one thing spectacular about sitting at a stoplight in each the biggest and the quickest car in sight.
All-wheel steering makes it surprisingly agile, and the energetic roll stabilization discovered within the S Sport bundle retains it flat in corners. The Audi Drive Choose system makes it an automotive multitool with many drive modes and customizable changes to suspension and engine response to create your individual.
But when an enormous, unelectrified V8 is a throwback in 2025, so is its gasoline economic system. The EPA charges the SQ7 for 15 mpg within the metropolis and 21 mpg on the freeway. In follow, I acquired a lot lower than that. I’ve pushed extra fuel-efficient full-size pickups.
All of it feels a little bit basic in 2025. Typically the classics are what you need. However you may’t assist however discover that even the AMG model of the Mercedes-Benz GLE provides a hybrid system. Ditto the BMW X5 M Competitors.
Screens and Switches Like a 747
That sensation of barely dated luxurious continues to the cabin.
The setting is luxurious, with actual leather-based (a shiny purple in my tester, including drama to the cabin), and a headliner in Audi’s subtle Dinamica microsuede.
The driving force faces a digital instrument display. Within the middle sits a touchscreen dealing with leisure and navigation. Beneath that may be a smaller, 6.8-inch diagonal display controlling the local weather and seating features.
Beneath all of that sits a row of metallic-finished buttons and knobs duplicating a lot of these features.
I respect actual knobs and buttons. However it’s all a little bit a lot. It reminds you that, in 2015, when this automobile debuted, all of us thought automobiles full of screens have been the peak of luxurious. In 2025, with our display addictions, it looks like overload.
Newer Audi designs have simplified all of this, consolidating screens.
I don’t need to overemphasize person interface design. The reality is, you get used to how your automobile works fairly shortly. Few of us drive round in a automobile from one model, considering, “This presentation appears to be like neater in different manufacturers.”
However it does. The SQ7’s difficult controls would give me pause, however I’d recover from them for that engine word.
Seating within the second row is comfy for adults. The third row, nonetheless, is a little bit small for anybody previous center college.
I believed I’d seen each automotive expertise. However I used to be stunned when the SQ7 began counting down the seconds till a stoplight turned inexperienced in a little bit driver’s instrument-screen icon. This trick solely works at specifically outfitted stoplights, however I did see it greater than as soon as.
The Bang & Olufsen system is great, with depth and concert-hall house within the sound.
Getting old, However the Better of Us Are
There’s a restricted viewers for one thing just like the 2025 Audi SQ7. However Audi is aware of that, and doesn’t construct too a lot of them.
The SQ7 provides a incredible engine, maybe the grippiest all-wheel-drive system ever devised, and all-wheel steering. It wraps it in a subtly engaging bundle and fills the cabin with creamy leather-based and several other screens.
In reality, that’s what all of us considered luxurious about six or eight years in the past.
Luxurious felt fairly rattling good six years in the past. You would possibly need to safe it for your self into the 2020s.
Nonetheless, if the spirit of the SQ7 appeals to you however you’d like a little bit extra up-to-date cabin, I strongly suspect Audi will give us that with this automobile’s successor pretty quickly.
When it arrives, it’s going to possible swimsuit our notion of luxurious in 2026 — tasting menus and fusion flavors. Should you want one thing meatier, get it whilst you can.
