A large luxury four-door with a powerful V8 – that’s not as hot as it used to be, which makes us sad. However, we believe that the all-new Audi RS7 Sportback will bring sexy back by combining the best interior with something we liked about all Audis with V8 engines: the sound.
“The best interior” is a risky statement to make. We know that plenty of people hate Audi for reasons ranging from understeer to diesel emissions. But even the AMG-hungry Russians seem to enjoy all the screens they’re installing. The base A7 Sportback recently won a review against the CLS and a BMW 6 Series just to prove our point about the interior.
Of course, they are distracting and somewhat pointless, but so is a supermodel. We’ve seen some videos about rattly dashboards… and yeah, that’s bad. But at least 3M take is cheap.
The RS7 is not a Tesla or an SUV, which automatically makes it uncool. But that makes it a hipster car, and that’s great. Audi is sticking with the old-school V8 formula, despite quite clearly downsizing the S7. We believe that out of the box, the performance four-door coupe will have either 580 or 600 horsepower.
Due to all the extra scanners and radars, it will be heavier than before, so the real performance gains will come from other stuff, like the way the gearbox works and the active suspension. But at this point, we’ll take any car that’s not electric and very fast.
Mind you reports always talked about an RS7 e-tron with a setup mirroring Porsche’s plug-in Turbo models. But this Nurburgring spy video shows nothing to support electrification, which is not to say there’s no hybrid assist.
The prototype isn’t quite finished for production. For example, it sports unfinished fender flares. But we catch glimpses of the revisions made to the bumper intakes and dual oval exhaust tips. Please, Audi, never change those!
