Audi Q7 2020 review: updated SUV driven

I'm Simon Baker, this is Chasing Cars, and this is the new Audi Q7. Well, it's not completely new. This is the major product improvement, as Audi calls it, or the major facelift to the current second-generation Q7, which, although it doesn't carry the highest number, is actually Audi's largest SUV. And the Q7 is pretty popular here in Australia for a number of reasons. It has this sort of restrained, elegant styling to it that isn't too shouty. It's fairly luxurious inside, and it's decent to drive, and quite practical as well. So if you're after a luxurious crossover that can seat seven people in a genuine fashion, then the Q7 is a pretty good bet for a car to look at. But the facelift has given it, I reckon, a slightly more crisp aesthetic. I thought the previous version was a little bit plain, and a few of the extra flourishes they've added on the 2020 version I think suit the car pretty well. There's also a major change to the interior, where the Q7 scraps its old-style design language inside and adopts the new Audi interior design, and we'll talk about how that changes the car when we jump in. We'll also check out the back seat and the boot to examine the practicality of the Q7, before taking this Q7 50 TDI out onto the road. And this is one of two available V6 diesels here in Australia. But before we do all that, make sure to hit subscribe down below the video, and the notification bell, so you never miss any of our full-length Australian video car reviews. All right, let's get going. It's here inside the Q7 that the changes for the facelift are most obvious, and that's because the interior design has been totally changed over the pre-facelift version. If you're a bit of a fan of the Q7, you'll remember that before this 2020 model, there was a very minimal dash, more sort of soft-touch plastics down here, and a tablet-style screen that came out of the dash, and that's still paired to the same virtual cockpit that we have before us here. But everything to the left of the driver is totally different. Audi are moving to an integrated screen system now, so we have two touchscreens on upper-spec Audis like this one. The top screen is for your media and your navigation and your telephone, and it is touch capacitive, so you kind of feel your click happening under your fingers. And the same goes for this lower touchscreen, which is mainly for your climate control settings. So you do have to tap through things to change your temperature and your fan settings, which is not the best in my opinion. And I think that in Audis that are less expensive, or the smaller Audis where you get physical climate controls, that does work better. Now, that does mean the loss of the rotary MMI controller, so on a bumpy road, you have to make sure you're getting your taps quite accurate. But all in all, I know some people prefer integrated screens more than the tablet style, so there's trade-offs everywhere. In front of you as a driver, you have the virtual cockpit, which is still brilliant, best in class, really well integrated, shows you a big satellite map in front of you, and the data for that mapping is included for three years with the Audi Connect system, which is really generous. You also have wireless Apple CarPlay and wired Android Auto that works very well, and a nice Bose 3D stereo that sounds pretty good. Now, you sit here as a driver, nice and elevated over the traffic. It is a commanding driving position, big mirrors and a big glass house means it is possible to see out of this thing pretty well. And the seat itself is comfortable and supportive, though I think it could use a longer squab. We have the Valcona leather in the 50 TDI, which is Audi's highest grade of leather. You get a slightly lower quality Hyde in the 45 TDI model that costs 20 grand less, but it's all pretty nice. There's a wide range of electric adjustment, and we have seat heating, though not seat cooling, which is more relevant in a hot country like Australia. It's not always cold like it is today. In terms of the rest of the cabin, I think the materials are okay, though nothing to write home about. Like, I think there should be a stitched leather pad up on top of the dash in a car of this price. But the soft touch materials on the door and the Alcantara are nicely integrated, as is the aluminium trim. In terms of practicality, we have cup holders here, hand sanitizer, sign of the times, shallow... didn't close that properly... shallow bin between the seats with two USB ports, old-style, wireless smartphone charging, decent-sized glove box, and decent-sized door bins, but not all that much incidental storage, so it just gets a pass mark on practicality up front. Let's see how you fare in the second row. Here in the back, the Audi shows one of its biggest benefits, which is that it's really comfortable and spacious for carrying passengers. Not only are the back seats really plush and supportive, you know, this would be a great road trip car, but there's also space for tall people with long legs. Now, I'm six foot, so I'm not as tall as they come, but my headroom is really generous underneath this panoramic sunroof. Legroom's great sitting behind myself, and toe room is virtually unlimited. Plus, you can actually get three people across here. This middle seat is a discreet seat in its own right, so it's pretty much just as comfy as the outboard ones, and the hump in the floor is pretty low, so you won't be playing footsies with the two outboard passengers. However, you do get four zones of climate in this car, which is great, and that's standard on the 50 TDI. So we've got air vents, fan control, and temperature control for all four of these outboard seats, which is pretty generous. In terms of other amenities, we've got those soft materials back here, ashtrays in the door in case we go back to 1957, and you get netting on the back of both front seats for odds and ends storage. Plus, we have a little flip down armrest here between the seats with two small cup holders, nice as a rest to, you know, chill out on a longer drive, so it's pretty generous. Back here, let's check out those two jump seats in the third row. Well, it starts well because the good safe curbside access is on the left, which is what you want in Australia. Let's see how spacious it is. Okay, first of all, get that out of the way, the seat itself isn't too ridiculously uncomfortable. Put this seat back here, watch out for trapping your feet. Pull that up, that doesn't look too comfy for that person, that looks realistic. So, for me, as a six foot adult, look, I wouldn't want to spend bulk time back here, but I fit. Headroom, I've actually got a tiny bit in reserve. Legroom, I do have an, you know, an inch behind this second row seat, and that sort of confirms my theory about the Audi Q7, which is that it's a pretty good size. It's not as big as an X7 or a GLS Benz, it's a little bit smaller, and yet you still have this usable third row back here if you need it. I wouldn't be buying this car if you were going to deploy all three rows all the time, but as an occasional sixth and seventh seat, this works well. Here around the back, the facelift to the Q7 is fairly subtle, but you will notice this sort of satin chrome line that runs across the back in order to differentiate a facelift version from the pre-facelift, and there's also this new taillight design here. Otherwise, it's all pretty similar and fairly handsome. An electric tailgate, standard across the range, that operates reasonably smartly and opens up a nice big practical space. Totally flush here, so I think it'll slide straight in and out. A little chrome finisher to protect that red paintwork that's so attractive. And in terms of what the boot has on offer, it's pretty smart. So we have the air suspension controls here in the boot, so you can actually lower the car down as I'm doing now to make lifting heavy stuff into the boot a fair bit easier. It's really wide, it's quite long, and you can also deploy those back seats here electronically, so you don't actually have to do any manual labour, which is always quite nice in a luxury car like this. And then when you've finished packing or unpacking, it's just a press of a button to lower the tailgate again, so you can jump into the driver's seat and see how this thing drives, which is where we're going next. So what is the updated Audi Q7 like to drive? Well, unsurprisingly, it's really just like the pre-facelift Q7 to drive, but now is a good time to remind ourselves of exactly what that means. And there have been a couple of little specification changes to the underpinnings of this car that do make subtle little amendments to the driving experience, but really it's something that starts around the engines, and the engine lineup is pretty easy to understand here in Australia because the car launches with two V6 diesel engines that are very, very similar. They're both three litre single turbo units. One is badged 45 TDI. The other, which is in this car, is badged 50 TDI, and the difference is really the amount of boost and the power and torque that you get out of the unit. So here in the 50 TDI, we have 210 kilowatts of power and 600 newton metres of torque, whereas in the 45 TDI, you get 170 kilowatts and 500 newton metres of torque. So either way, this is a pretty beefy, but yet still relaxed and fairly understressed V6 diesel, and they both get the job done really well. In the 50 TDI, you do benefit from more alacrity, and the comparison is an easy one to make because it's basically the same spread of engines that you find in the Volkswagen Touareg, and we know that the 210 kilowatt engine in that car, it has a better top end, it's faster, it gets a 0 to 100 kilometre per hour sprint down by almost a second, and it generally makes the thing feel a little bit more lively. That being said, I would happily own the 45 TDI, which is more than enough for most people, and certainly enough for towing and carrying heavy loads. They both hook up to an 8-speed torque converter automatic gearbox, which is really seamless, works well, so you don't have to worry about learning the quirks of a dual-clutch unit in the Q7. It's a traditional auto. And, of course, you get quattro all-wheel drive, slightly rear-biased, but in a vehicle like the Q7, it really just ends up feeling very, very neutral. It's pretty intuitive at getting torque to the road at all times. This 50 TDI, it is dressed up as an S-line, so a slight aspiration of sportiness, I suppose, but it's a Q7 at the end of the day. Audi will be bringing the S Q7 in facelifted form, which has a really, really stonking V8 twin-turbo diesel, and that'll be something to look forward to, but for this car, for me, the Q7 is really about being a cruiser, and it is good at that, with one or two reservations. The first is that there's a lot of turbo lag, especially off the line. You can be pinning the throttle and wait two whole seconds before you really get any response from the engine, and that's because this is a big single-turbo V6, and the bigger you make that turbo, the more lag you naturally get out of it. Then, there is, you know, an important selection of wheel size, and I know I've mentioned this a lot. The Q7 has standard air suspension. It's now standard across the range. You used to have fixed steel suspension on the base car, but it now gets air, and the air suspension works really well on all the vehicles that are based on the Q7. Underpinnings, the Touareg, the Q7, the Cayenne, Bentayga, Lamborghini, Urus, the air is good, but the bigger you go with the wheel size, the more jitters you bring back into the ride quality. So, we're on the 21-inch wheels here, which are optional on the 50 TDI. 20 is a standard. I know the 20s work well from the Volkswagen, so just go with the 20-inch wheel. In fact, the 45 TDI pairs 19-inch wheels to air suspension, which would be a lovely, lovely ride quality. So, if you don't want all the bells and whistles, and you just want the comfiest experience, then a standard 45 TDI will deliver that. Refinement is, as expected, pretty good. There's a bit of road noise on these thick Contis. We've got 285-40 tires, Continental Conti Sports on this S-line Q7 here, and they do grip really well. They bring a bit more road noise into the cabin, but there's very little wind noise or other noise to speak of. All in all, it's a pretty comfy country touring experience. It's reasonably easy to drive in town because of the variable ratio steering that makes it nice and quick to manoeuvre at lower speeds. You have stuff like a 360-degree camera to help park it. You also get adaptive cruise control, high-speed AEB. You have front and rear cross-traffic alert, blind spot monitoring. You pretty much get the works in terms of safety, and the Lane Keep Assist works really, really well in a subtle fashion just to keep you on the straight and narrow, and you can actually turn that on and off with a quick access button. That thump you heard there, that's 21-inch wheels. So a little bit of a strain on the wheel size will pay dividends in Australia. But those are my thoughts on the driving. I think it's a pretty decent luxury SUV to drive, and that continues to be the case between the pre-facelift and this updated version. So those are our detailed impressions of the new 2020 Audi Q7. This facelift is a nice refinement to the Q7, which was already a well-packaged and decently priced vehicle here in the luxury seven-seat segment. Although I kind of malign the loss of the old-school Audi design language, which suited my tastes better, I do think most people are going to like the more extravagant interior design presented in the 2020 Q7, and you can, of course, let me know all your comments about that down below. This is still a pretty good large SUV to drive, with plenty of torque and good road holding as well. It looks cooler than it did before, in my opinion. Now, make sure to leave any comments you have on the Audi Q7 below the video. While you're down there, make sure to hit subscribe, and as always, thanks for watching Chasing Cars.