The day of Top Gears test drive of the £96,290 V12 diesel Audi Q7 just so happened to coincide with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and forecast of an economic depression in the US unseen since 1929. And all this while, that same country is waging bitter and ruinous war on various fronts and imploding over the prospect of a liberal black man getting the keys to the White House. There might have been a better moment for Audi GmbH to launch the world’s most powerful diesel SUV.
The linch-pin here is that word ‘diesel’. As we revealed in the October issue, the R10’s success in the American Le Mans Series is a stroke of grand strategic cunning to soften up the US market to this still-alien fuel source. Audi is about to launch a raft of diesel vehicles in a country hooked on gasoline, and has put the Q7 V12 TDI at the cliff face. This is a car built with the American market in mind, now fitted with an engine born of an American race series, ready to prove to a sceptical nation that the black stuff is the new black, if you will.
And, boy, does it make a good case. The Q7 has been around for a couple of years now, although its price, exclusivity and sheer size ensure it remains a comparatively rare sight on British roads. The transition of Audi’s R10 TDI racing engine into a road car, albeit a technology-sharing exercise rather than a straight swap, has arrived at a time when the car’s status as vulgar SUV du jour was on the wane. Now it’s right back up there, not least because of the price and size of the engine, but also because of what that engine does.http://www.topgear.com/uk/audi/q7/road-test/v12-tdi
No comments:
Post a Comment