Audi RS7 Sportback 2013 Review - International

Audi RS 7

What we liked:
>> Just looks gorgeous
>> Unrelenting, raw speed
>> Astonishingly beautiful interior

Not so much:
>> Over-the-top good bits are options...
>> ...Which cost plenty
>> That’s about it, though

OVERVIEW
>> RS 7 sits at the very top of the Quattro family
After years of half-baked efforts, Audi is now serious about leveraging its RS brand.

A couple of years ago, it parachuted a new boss into its quattro GmbH operation with the singular ambition to deliver a full family of high-horsepower models. Franciscus van Meel took over an organization that usually drew praise for its hotter Audis, but didn’t deliver very many of them. Usually (with some notable exceptions like the RS5 and the R8), they just arrived in the last year or two of the production run of each model.

Meanwhile AMG was turning out faster, more expensive versions of just about everything, M not only sat stuff atop the 1, 3, 5 and 6 Series ranges, but had X models as well.

Mr van Meel’s job was to turn quattro into an Audi version of both of its German rivals. If people were paying a lot more money for deep fried models, Audi wanted more of it.

quattro under Meel has worked on it and its famous big-power wagons are no longer at the top of the Audi-based quattro tree. This is! Enter the RS 7

Just as the A6 and the A7 share many of their chassis, suspension and electronics modules, so the RS 7 shares a lot with the RS6 wagon -- the same twin-turbo, 4.0-litre V8 sitting up front, spinning out 412kW and bellowing the RS7 to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds. That, and it can eke out 9.8L/100km on the NEDC cycle, but good luck replicating that.

It’s a car that drips in luxury from any surface.

If you can see it or touch it, Audi has spent effort and money making it look and feel good.

If you can sit in it, it’s clad in diamond-quilted, perforated leather that is both heated and ventilated.

If you can hear it, it’s been tuned, even if it’s the exhaust or the Bang & Olufsen audio setup or even the clicks of the indicators.

It’s so good in so many areas that you sometimes lose track of whether it’s a luxury car playing at being a sports sedan, a sports sedan playing at being a practical family machine or a piece of pure design that doubles as a limousine.

It’s that impressive.

PRICES AND EQUIPMENT
>>It’s a range topper. It won’t be cheap
Okay, it’s a range topper, but only of sorts. There is, of course, the R8 range and on both price and performance, that’s the quattro range topper. But if you’re considering the cars based on standard Audi road cars (which is what the R8 isn’t), then it’s the RS 7.

And if you turn up at an Audi dealership with $200,000, you will walk away disappointed. You will certainly need more, but how much Audi isn’t saying. If the S7 lists at $180,000, we’d be thinking somewhere around the $225-240K mark.

For that, you will get a car with full LED headlights, diamond-quilted leather seats all round (complete with adjustable side bolstering) and a a choice of 10 body colours -- two of which are matte.

It’s a lovely interior, with black-faced instruments, white figures and red tacho needles sitting front and centre. There is a TFT screen between the tacho and speedo and there’s a beautiful-feeling, flat-bottomed leather steering wheel.

With its eight-speed automatic transmission, the RS 7 has just two pedals, both of which are clad in aluminium, while there are RS badges on the door sills, the multi-media display screens, the steering wheel, the key and the screen in the instrument cluster… Just in case you’ve forgotten how much you’ve spent.

The electronics in the multi-media setup are much the same as the S7, though the RS 7 picks up a lap timer, a shift light and turbo boost pressure and temperature gauges.

Quattro hasn’t been shy on details, either. It has everything from a lane-departure warning to radar cruise control to auto-dimming LED lights. There is also a tyre-pressure monitoring system, a self-parking system, a three-zone climate control setup, a WLAN hotspot arrangement. Even night vision assistance.

There is a standard glass sunroof, a range of audio system, which tops out at Bang & Olufsen, keyless entry and start and hook-ups for your phone or iPad via most kinds of connections.

While it doesn’t get the outrageously flared wheel arches of some of history’s crankiest RS models, the RS7 does score a deeper front splitter, more aerodynamic sills and a honeycomb grille. It looks all the better for it and is by far the best-looking version yet of the A7 experiment.

It sits on 20-inch wheels and tyres, though most are likely to plump for the 21-inch option and there are other options, which might surprise none of you.

Key among them, mechanically anyway, is in the suspension. Here you can replace the standard air springs with a fixed-rate steel spring that couples to three-way adjustable, electronically controlled dampers. It could be the fastest way to change the car’s character and delivers added depth to the Drive Select system.

We say “could be” because there’s also the option of Audi’s brilliant sports differential for the rear axle. If you plan to drive it quickly at any time (ever!), we’d recommend this, because it also delivers torque vectoring.

On top of that you can grab any number of bits and bobs, from the 360-degree camera to carbon-ceramic front discs or a more dynamic steering setup.

PACKAGING
>>Bags of space and style – for four
If interior space is really what you need in an Audi, you’ll be better off in an S6 wagon (sorry, Avant). But if style is what you need, go with this one. Oh, and you’ll only get four seats, but they’ll all be beautifully sculpted.

Like the standard A7 upon which it’s based, the RS 7 has storage space aplenty, huge door pockets, deep console storage areas and, for this class, a relatively generous glovebox.

Front seat room is generous and so is the rear legroom. The boot has 535 litres of storage space in its standard form, but you can drop the leather rear seats to create a 1390-litre hole if you need to.

The RS7 is not a small car though. Overall length of 4980mm, 1911mm wide and 1408mm high all match the S7, as does the 2914mm wheelbase.

It’s a beautifully engineered engine, with a pair of twin-scroll turbochargers lurking inside the vee. It has such other niceties as direct fuel-injection and the ability to shut down four cylinders to improve cruising fuel economy.

Officially, it’s good for 280km/h, though you can order up higher performance (it’s mainly a tyre thing) to lift that to 305km/h. Audi’s engineering team admits it regularly saw around 12km/h more than that in testing.

The RS7’s fuel economy figure of 9.8L/100km is very good for this style of car (only 0.2 litres behind the S7 despite a 103kW power and 150Nm lift and, pointedly, 0.1 litres better than the M models) and the engine delivers a huge spread of performance. Its torque reaches a peak at a diesel-like 1750rpm and holds it all the way to 5500rpm.

Then there’s its power peak, which isn’t really a peak at all. It arrives at 5700rpm and stays until 6700rpm, while the engine will hit its limiter at 7000rpm. What’s more, in its manual mode, the RS 7 will allow the driver to hit that limiter hard.

Besides spinning the turbos up so they feed in a maximum of 1.2 bar, the exhaust system boasts flaps to boost the sound and Audi offers (surprise, surprise) an even rowdier Sports exhaust as an option.

All this mumbo punches through Audi’s eight-speed automatic transmission (which has been tuned with sharper shifts and more aggressive downshifting for RS 7 work) and is spread to all four wheels. The mechanical centre diff is rear biased, sending 60 per cent of the drive to the rear wheels most of the time to counter the front-heavy weight distribution.

If things get slippery, the quattro all-wheel drive very rapidly adjusts to other demands with a maximum of 80 per cent to the rear or 70 per cent to the front.

This all sits in a large version of Audi’s MLB architecture (it’s also the basis of the A6), so that means the engine is longitudinal as is the gearbox.

It’s all anchored by a standard 390mm front brake disc, with its cast iron friction surface mated to an alloy hat, and a six-piston monobloc caliper. There is an optional 420mm carbon-ceramic front brake available.

But the Panamera Turbo lists for an enormous sum (around $380,000), is no faster to 100km/h than the RS 7 and is definitely uglier. What do you get for your extra $140,000-odd grand? Enough? For some, a Porsche badge makes a big difference. For others… Well…

Commonsense will send people over BMW way, where the M5 lurks around the $230,000 mark and the sexier sister car, the M6 GranCoupe, sits $70K higher. The latter has been a clear development target for the RS 7, which matches the engine output of both BMWs to the kW, despite giving away 0.4 litres of capacity. And it adds insult to injury by being half a second quicker to 100km/h.

Benz’s E63 AMG falls a measly 2kW short of the RS 7’s power figure. And if that’s a bit stodgy, there’s always the CLS version.

Jaguar is doing some hotter stuff but it’s not quite at this level, though you could cast a realistic eye over to Bentley on performance, if not cost.

The ‘Brit’ brand does share the core of the RS 7’s engine, gearbox and driveline, after all, but the Audi gives it to you for a lot less money than the Continental Flying Spur.

Call it purposeful luxury, because that’s what a car of this kind really needs to deliver. And the RS7 delivers.

The interior works perfectly from every seat. The view out of the cabin is excellent, even in the back, and there is enough space for six-footers regardless of the seat into which they’re strapped.

But firing up that engine is a highlight. It starts in its quietest mode as a default and even that carries a not-so-subtle threat about what it might do to you if you’re not careful.

It has a deep, smooth initial rumble that, having given itself a blip on startup, settles down into a curiously quiet idle. But once you flick the Sport mode, that all changes. With the exhaust flaps open the noise runs free, but it’s still smooth and never gives the impression that it’s trying very hard, even when it is.

You can tell this by flicking it over into Manual mode and mashing the throttle until it hits the limiter. Actually, it won’t hit the limiter. It will smash it, then it will hold the engine revs there, with the exhaust bubbling and crackling and doing its best to imitate an F1 car on a pit-lane speed limiter.

That noise tuning is one of the sexiest things about the RS 7, delivering a sonorous howl at high revs, a meaty bellow in the midrange and a popping, burbling cackle on the over-run.

But it does more than make noise. Its sheer speed, from any point in the rev range at any time and in any gear, is disturbing in a car this comfortable and luxurious.

It’s so docile, its combination of active damping, a comfort powertrain, steering, exhaust and suspension setting and that unabashed luxury all combine to deceive you into thinking that urban trickling is what it’s best at. It isn’t.

This car was born to blast down highways and while its benchmark sub-four second sprint is impressive, it doesn’t feel like it takes much longer again to go from 100 to 200km/h. The seamless eight-speed auto just keeps sliding from one gear to another, 60km/h, 100km/h, 140km/h… And then you blink and you’re outrunning commercial aircraft on takeoff.

Audi also lets you turn off all of its skid and traction-control systems (not that the all-wheel drive with its fabulously reactive center-diff, needs traction control) and going ‘nude’ reveals a car that is every bit as controllable as it was with all its electronic clothes on.

It isn’t a sports car, not with Audi’s traditionally dull steering and a lot of weight, but it’s very sharp. It just lacks that last trace of crispness, but you can easily say the same of its German competitors.

This RS 7 is Audi’s most convincing fast big car yet. Its brakes are astonishing, its grip is unflustered but still feels rear-drive and progressive and taking up the option of jumping from the unit to the brilliant Sports rear differential is, in our view, a must.

Electrical grip catchers are all well and good, but there’s nothing quite as accurate or intuitive as a good, limited-slip mechanical rear diff and the Sport diff is very nearly as good as they come.

We drove the RS7 on the roads around Le Mans, France, for two hours, which gave us freeway, town and twists, plus dry running and heavy rain to experiment with. And the car simply can’t be fazed, even when numpties in Porsche 964s spin off exiting roundabouts and fall off into ditches in front of it.

The first unit we drove had the standard air suspension with 20-inch tires all riding 20mm lower than the S7, while the second had the harder core 21-inch rubber, steel springs and three-way adjustable dampers. And we preferred the second one.

It’s just superb. 

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