It is 8:12am on a Tuesday. The tidal barriers have moved to accommodate the traffic flowing into the city on Military Rd at Neutral Bay. Heading away from the city, some doofus in a Porsche Boxster which I have seen on many occasions (due to his stupid purple personalised number plate) has run into the back of a Toyota Yaris. I can't but feel a sense of schadenfreude about the whole thing because I've seen this Boxster driving through traffic like Fangio on so many mornings... well maybe not like Fangio, perhaps more like Andrea de Cesaris.
Anyway, traffic is blocked up slightly worse than an August head cold and standing next to this bus in traffic is an Audi Q7. I am able to look down on it and it still looks massive. The car is so big that people in the passenger's seat are in another time zone and the people in the back seats haven't got out of bed yet.
Accodring to the badges on the back, this particular Q7 is a 3.0 TDI. At minimum it cost "the owner" $90,500 (because we all know that there's no way in Hades that this car is "owned" by the person driving it but rather a company).
By TDI, my first impression is that they mean TeDIous but even in 3.0L trim, this diesel is generating 550 Nm of torque which is even more than the R8 sports car. I also not that the car weighs 2300kg, so it would be like driving a barge. Admittedly with the 5.9L V12 diesel it generates more than 1000 Nm of torque but it needs to as it weighs 2665kg.
It is when the sun roof opens though that I truly understand what this car is about and who it's for. The man in the driver's seat is wearing a "Captain's Hat".
The only people in the world who should be wearing these things are military and police officers, Russian novelists and people who own yachts who think that they're military officers or Russian novelists. I suspect that this is one of those people.
Although Audi like to think of this as a "full-size luxury crossover SUV", perhaps the term "land yacht" is more appropriate. At 10.2 secs to do 0-100km/h, even the wheezy little Barina scoots faster off the line than one of these.
At $90,500 this is someone who obviously actually had a choice about what sort of car they'd get. The ironic thing is that Dora The Explorer who is playing on the screens in the back for the kiddiwinks, actually goes off road more than this car ever will. This car at $90,500 clearly isn't for someone concerned with performance, or styling for that matter as this thing is hideously ugly. That giant squarish black hole in the front reminds me of the fireplace and the hearth.
This then is for whom and what this car is about. This is for someone who likes to be in control of something that moves slowly like a yacht, is hard to manoeuvre like a yacht and is a poor investment like a yacht and like most people who own yachts, they don't care what anyone else thinks.
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