DRUNK ON POWER

Audi’s new coupe-SUV borrows the family genes, and puts them to great use in an irresistible package of style, power and technology

- AFZAL RAWUTHER

IT ALL STARTED – LIKE ALL GOOD stories these days – with a post on social media, by someone we consider to be an authority on all things automotive. The gist was a 250km run over some awful patches of road to a famous hill station, in a bit under three and a half hours. I know it doesn’t sound like much but trust me, it is. I have often found myself on those very roads in piddly hatchbacks and have had to resist the urge to smack my head against the steering wheel. For kilometre after kilometre, you dodge pothole after gigantic pothole, only to find yourself unable to dodge them anymore. It never ends! The result? Rearranged internal organs and eardrums reverberating not so much with the sound of music that I turn up to the max on such drives, but with the pain of sharp, shrill noises from panic braking and being at the fag end of the tiny suspension travel that hatchbacks come with. That’s the price to pay for enthusiastic driving on such roads, and that is when you get it right. Get it wrong and blown tyres are the least of your worries. Of course, I must clarify that I am no great driver and my modest skills and talent are no match to those of the aforementioned motor-noter. However, there is something to be said about the sheer capability of the car that he was driving, the Audi Q7, the go-to luxury SUV for the better part of a decade.

The Q7 is what really kicked-off the trend for luxury SUVs in India. It was everywhere you looked — Bollywood, cricket, real estate barons, mantris — if you considered yourself important, you got yourself a Q7. If you were important, a Q7 came to you. Kudos to Audi, they figured out product placement like no one had, and the paparazzi snapped the Q7 an awful lot.