Audi Q7 (2006 – 2015) Review

When it first broke cover in 2006, the Audi Q7’s imposing looks and seven-seat interior made it a popular, if pricey, choice. Although some elements of the interior now look rather dated, the question remains today: What’s not to like? Our Audi Q7 review will illustrate why it’s still worth considering.

Granted, this vast SUV is marred by the ubiquitous Audi Big Grille – the face of an inflatable doll wearing chrome lipstick. But it does exactly what it says on the tin, and has a classy, well made, ergonomically superb cabin that ably demonstrates why Audi was at the time, and for many remains, the industry yardstick for interior design. 

More surprising perhaps, is the number of rivals lined up against the Audi Q7 right from the off: The Mercedes ML, representing the global best-seller in the segment; the Range Rover Sport with proper off-road credentials; the Lexus RX 450h SE-L exuding the strongest eco credentials; the Porsche Cayenne, at the time a frog in desperate need of a princess; and the BMW X6, busy outselling the BMW X5 in Italy.

The Audi Q7’s ace-in-the-hole was, alone in this company, a seven-seat interior, which equipped it with a versatility that even the upmarket Range Rover could not compete.

With all seven seats in place you could still unearth 333 litres of loadspace. Fold the two third-row seats flat and this volume grew to a chunky 775 litres, whilst folding the second tier out of the way created a cavernous 2035-litre capacity.

With an extraordinary £37,775 to £99,370 price range, the Audi Q7 offered a range of petrol and diesel engines which, in harness with an eight-speed automatic gearbox and all-wheel drive, were chosen to shift the Audi Q7’s considerable bulk – even the lightest model weighed in at 2300kg – with a measure of vim appropriate to the car’s premium status.

Pick of the bunch for us remains the 248PS 3.0 litre V6 diesel for its blend of pace and efficiency, and with sufficient torque on offer to give the Audi Q7 a towing capability of 750kg unbraked, and 3200kg braked.

Over the course of its six year, pre-facelift life, the Audi Q7 also offered buyers a bewildering range of trim levels built around a reasonably comprehensive entry-level standard equipment specification.

This included adaptive air-suspension, cruise control, parking sensors, seven seats, leather upholstery and a 6.5-inch colour infotainment screen with DAB radio and a single CD player. However, sat-nav was reserved for a trim level price hike of nearly £5000.

The enormous size of the Audi Q7 is both a blessing and a curse. Even though the third row of seats is only really suitable for children over any distance, you can’t argue with the amount of space given to front and middle-row passengers, with so much shoulder room that three adults can comfortably sit in the latter.

However, driving around town, the car feels excessively long and wide. All models have parking sensors, but that’s not much help in tight parking bays. Narrow roads with width-restriction bollards can be a particularly fraught experience.

On the open road, the Audi Q7 demonstrates a surprising ability to handle quite tidily, and there’s a deal of pleasure to be had bunging a car this big down a twisting A-road.

The trouble is, the stiffness of suspension needed to deliver this makes for a poor ride, even with adaptive air-suspension in play.

So what should be a pretty imperious high-speed cruise is unsettled by any road surface imperfections whatsoever. Indeed, on poor, rapidly undulating surfaces, the car’s composure falls apart entirely.

Used prices for this generation of Audi Q7 range from about £1500 to a whisker under £20,000. A 2009 upgrade makes later cars a more appealing proposition. As ever, and assuming all things mechanical are in order, the higher the equipment specification, the better you’ll do for your buck.

In the company of these rivals, the Audi Q7’s a given if you need seven seats. If not, the choice of Porsche, Mercedes or BMW will come down to badge preference.

With huge tyres and firm suspension, the Audi Q7 delivers impressive grip with very little body lean in quicker corners.

However, despite precise, accurate steering and paddles on hand to give you manual control of the smooth transmission, the car often feels too wide to throw down your favourite country lane.

Smooth it may be, but the eight-speed auto gearbox takes an age to respond to kick-down demands for more oomph.

All of which suggests that the Audi Q7 is in its element on long-haul motorway journeys, which, boasting enviable refinement, it would be – were it not for the tough love offered by the undercarriage.

What should be an utterly imperious high-speed cruise in marred by undercarriage which delights in detailing every nugget of surface imperfection for you in lurid detail.

Even the lightest Audi Q7 tips the scales at a substantial 2300kg – about as much as two Ford Fiestas – so that usual Audi feeling of over-servo’ed brakes doesn’t actually hold sway here. In fact, the brakes need a stout initial shove to wake them up to the task in hand.

As with most Audis, a drive mode selector allows you to switch between comfort or sport-based settings, and, as with most Audis, the Auto mode can be relied upon to consistently sort things out on your behalf.

That being said, the Audi Q7 has such a tough ride that this may be that rare Audi when the driver will actually wrest control from the computer and insist on remaining in Comfort mode.

If you decide that off-roading is your bag, the air-suspension can be raised for better ground clearance, and there’s even scope to further raise the suspension for extreme obstacles.

You’re unlikely to get that far into the rough stuff, though, because, even though the quattro four-wheel-drive system is as sophisticated as you’d expect after more than a quarter of a century of fettling, the powertrain has no switchable low range gearbox option, and those big fat road tyres struggle for grip.

At launch in 2006, the Audi Q7 offered a choice of 207PS and 248PS variants of a 3.0-litre V6 turbodiesel.

Mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission with flappy paddle manual override and Audi’s proven quattro all-wheel drive system, the lesser-powered engine delivers a 0-62mph time of 9.1 seconds and a top speed of 127mph, while the beefier unit offers 8.0 seconds and 135mph.

Further up the range, a 237PS 4.2-litre V8 turbodiesel received a much needed power hike in 2009, the resultant 330PS propelling the car to 60mph in just 6.4 seconds.

Also appearing in 2009, but short-lived, was a 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 TDI unit that generated over 500PS and flung the Audi Q7 from 0-62mph in only 5.5 seconds, and on to a predictably governed maximum of 155mph.

Though originally offered with a 349PS 4.2 litre petrol V8, the Audi Q7 quickly changed to more frugal 3.0-litre V6 motors with a choice of 271PS or 332PS, the former dispatching 0-62mph in 7.9 seconds, the latter 6.9 seconds, with top speeds of 140mph and 155mph respectively.

However, these units do have to be revved pretty hard to give of their best, which makes them noisy, and neither offers CO2 emissions that would appeal to company car drivers.

By 2013, all petrol engines had been removed from the Audi Q7 model range.

Audi Q7 safety levels are merely adequate, rather than exceptional, for an SUV of this size.

It received a four-star rating from Euro NCAP, the independent crash test assessors.

Front occupants are protected by front, side and head airbags, and the head airbag system extends to protect all three seating tiers. Additional side airbags can also be specified for the second row.

The standard fit electronic stability control has additional features including a rollover stabilisation programme that intervenes if it detects that the Audi Q7 is in danger of toppling over.

The Audi Q7 has a towing capability of 750kg unbraked, and 3200kg braked.

Given the amount of cabin space here, it’s no wonder the Audi Q7 is 5089mm long and 1983mm wide.

The obvious downsides are that it’s a very tight fit for the average parking space, single garages are a challenge and that care is called for when manoeuvring round town.

The front seats are properly comfortable, and the driving position’s first class, with outstanding ergonomics.

Second-row leg and headroom is outstanding, and, for once, the middle-seat passenger is barely short-changed at all in the width department. Plus the seat base slides a few inches back and forth to give third tier knees a tad more room.

That being said, the rearmost seats are far better suited to children than adults.

Loadspace capacity starts at 333 litres with all three rows of seating in use, rises to 775 litres with the third row folded into the loadspace floor and increases to a whopping 2035 litres with the second row seats flopped forward.

There are cargo nets on the side of the passenger footwell and the backs of the front seats, plus a waterproof storage area beneath the boot floor for storing dirty boots.

Facelifted models from 2009 are available with climate controlled comfort seats that can heat or cool occupants, and an optional powered tailgate also appeared on the menu.

For its day, the Audi Q7 was an industry yardstick and superb build and material quality abounds, although the plastic air vents, small 6.5-inch centre console screen and red LED air-conditioning temperature readouts look a little frugal and archaic by today’s standards.  

But in 2006 it really was tough to top a premium Audi interior.

The switchgear is all tight to the touch and lovely to use, the analogue driver’s instruments are a paragon of clarity yet to be surpassed, and there is no poor plastic surfacing, even way back in the boot.

The centre console houses a 6-5-inch colour infotainment screen controlled via rotary knob, fitted as standard across the model range.

The stereo features a DAB radio and a single CD player. To this day, the infotainment’s rotary knob control, surrounded by shortcut menu buttons for all the major functions, remains a paragon of crisp, swift usability – spend just a few minutes with this system and you’ll never want to play with another touchscreen on the move.

Unfortunately, however, you needed to jump grades by a few levels to find a system fitted that incorporated sat-nav, and Bluetooth remained on the options list throughout.

New tech was added in 2009, including a revamped infotainment system with touch control, as well as smartphone integration with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

The Audi Connect service was expanded, and a tablet for rear-seat passengers made available.

Pitched against the 2006 new prices of the Mercedes ML (£36,000-£58,000), the Range Rover Sport (£38,000-£75,000), Porsche Cayenne (£35,000-£91,000), BMW X6 (£43,000-£54,000) and Lexus 450h SE-L (£42,000-£56,000), the Audi Q7’s price range of £37,775 to £99,370 would seem pretty competitive.

It’s worth remembering, too, that the highest figure relates to a 6.0-litre twin-turbo V12 diesel launched in 2009, and that the cost of the second priciest Audi Q7 was almost £40,000 less.

Today, a whisker over £1500 will buy you a used Audi Q7, the provenance of which you should check very carefully indeed, with a more reasonable cost estimate of between £18,000 and £20,000 for a high-specification, lower-mileage offering.

The Audi Q7 has tended to suffer a little more than others come resale time, retaining just under 40% of its value after three years or 36,000 miles compared to around 50% for its rivals. 

We found three versions of our preferred 248PS 3.0 TDI V6-engined Audi Q7 for sale: a 2008 S Line variant with 163,000 miles on the clock for £3995; a 2012 80,000-mile S Line model for £13,949; and a 2012 S Line Plus – which boasts sat nav – showing just 32,569 miles for £20,895.

Owning an SUV this size was never going to be an inexpensive experience. Of all the engines on offer, the 3.0 TDI diesel is obviously the most affordable in terms of running costs, with the V12 TDI only for those with the deepest pockets.

Introduced in 2009 with a small raft of other range upgrades, the 3.0 TDI ‘clean diesel’ adopted AdBlue to eradicate virtually all harmful nitrous oxide emissions.

It also uses an energy recovery system which reduces CO2 by 5g/km. The 207PS version of the 3.0 TDI engine returns 39mpg and CO2 emissions of 189g/km, whilst the 248PS variant returns 34mpg and 195g/km.

For a more sporting drive, the 4.2 litre TDI averages just 30.7mpg, with CO2 emissions of 242g/km. This places it in a mildly daunting tax band…

From 2013, there were no longer any petrol engines available in the range – unsurprising given that the diesels were more popular, combining high performance with reasonable running costs.

The 6.0 litre V12 diesel was also dropped at this stage, proving noisy, not particularly smooth and eye-wateringly expensive to buy.

At launch, the Audi Q7 was available in in four trim levels: quattro, quattro S Line, quattro S Line Plus and quattro SE.

Two additional trim levels, S Line Sport Edition and S Line Style Edition, built on S Line Plus to give the car either a more rugged or a sportier appearance.

The standard equipment specification for the entry-level Audi Q7 quattro trim included ABS, an alarm, audio remote, climate control, cruise control, electric mirrors, split/folding rear seats, electric front and rear windows and heated mirrors.

Buyers also enjoyed power-assisted steering, remote locking, roof rails, steering wheel reach and rake adjustment, driver, front passenger and side airbags, parking sensors, three-point rear seatbelts and Isofix child seat anchor points.

Audi Q7 S Line standard equipment added alloy wheels, body-coloured bumpers, a CD player, electric driver and passenger seat adjustment, front fog-lights, headlight washers, height-adjustable driver’s seat with lumbar support and partial leather upholstery.

To the S line trim level the Audi Q7 S Line Plus specification added heated front seats, full leather upholstery, metallic paint and sat-nav.