Audi Q7 review

Most versions are practical. Thank the Lord given the Q7’s overall footprint. Five decent seats, two slightly smaller pop-up ones in the rear for the mild-hybrid petrol and diesels. With the middle row of seats up and the rearmost two folded away, boot space is 780-litres (plenty), with a genuinely van-ish 1,908-litres with every chair stowed away. Like we said, it’s a big car. And even though those two rearmost seats are a little upright and pew-like, a six-footer can get in there, as long as you slide the middle bench forward a bit. Which you can. 

You’ll not get luggage for seven in the remainder of the boot if you’re fully-loaded, but enough for days out and unexpected friends, and it all flips, flops and folds easily enough. What a shame, then, that you can only have five seats and an admittedly-still-giant 563-litre boot if you spec the TFSI e plug-in hybrid. That really does limit the appeal of the big PHEV Audi – with only five seats on offer you could save a fair bit of money and buy a Q5 PHEV. Or better still, an A6 Avant with a similar plug-in powertrain. 

Quality inside the Q7 is generally excellent, of course, and there are a myriad of useful stows and cubbies. Plenty of power sockets too. In fact, there’s pretty much everything you need out of a big family bus, it’s just a bit nicer than a more mainstream MPV. Interestingly, all seats bar the driver’s come with ISOFIX mounting points - handy if you run some sort of nursery, you'd assume.

Up front it’s as per all the latest large Q models now, with haptic twin-touchscreens in the middle (a 10.1in unit stacked on top of an 8.6in screen purely for the climate controls) and another screen in the binnacle for the dials. It’s all configurable and customisable and generally knee deep in menu options, but once you have it set to your favourites, it all works reasonably well despite a slight bit of lag. There is a fear that one glitch in the matrix and you’ll be looking at a very large Audi-shaped brick, but in terms of general use, Audi does a good – if complex – cockpit.

There’s also a brilliant Bang & Olufsen sound system on offer (albeit optional on all but Vorsprung) and various bits of useful standard kit from an electric tailgate to keyless entry, a town centre’s worth of CCTV, colour-change LED ambient lighting, endlessly customisable climate control and electric everything... enough to keep you interested even if you’re in the ‘basic’ S Line spec. Don’t expect any weird and wonderful interior trims on the configurator though – this is a sober and sensible Audi, so you’ll be choosing between black and grey leather.