2009 Audi Q5 Prestige

^M00:00:00 >> In what maybe the most competitive sector in the car business, Audi offers this, the Q5 compact crossover 3.2 V6 and the long awaited new version of their MMI interface. Let's check the test. ^M00:00:14 [ Music ] ^M00:00:19 >> Now the big headline inside is we have our first look at what they call generation three MMI, which is Audi's interface. There's good news and bad here in my opinion. The bad is, right off the bat, we still have this idiotic fourbutton, fourcorners of the screen nonsense. I don't get it I never will, but there it is, they have kept that. Luckily beyond that a lot of things have been improved. First of all, check out the map. They have done amazing 3D rendering. We are looking there at the AT&T�ballpark in downtown San Francisco; you can actually see the pitcher's mound and home plate. If you like the smoothness of our graphic fly over here, thank N Vidia [assumed spelling] its also hard drive based. You have a 40gig drive in here. The thing in the middle, you push, it's got a tilt ability. So you can move it around in just about any direction. Entering destinations has gotten a little bit quicker because of the hard drive system. I'm still not a fan of this rotating alphabet. And, you know, I'd still love a touch screen. ^M00:01:11 [ Music ] ^M00:01:13 >> The audio system in our car, because we have the Prestige trim, which, by the way, adds $11,000 in one swoop includes Bang and Olufsen sound. Fourteen speakers around the cap and each one has a little BNO�silver trim ring around it, just to remind you what you paid for. 505 watts of power through, I think, like a dozen channels of amplification. The sources we have for our media are called out here, now because we have a hard drive we can import music to said drive and that's the upper left corner. As you see the source I have selected is an SD�card that lives under here in this little door. And for whatever reason, using either a commercial music disc or a disc full of MP 3's, I can't get import from disc to light up at all. My sound controls, because I have the BNO audio, give me the usual base, treble, balance, fader, but I have also got some DSP�tools which can be good or bad. This one let's you decide where the sound is centered, front seats or driver's seat or in the rear, if you want to be magnanimous. And then the audio pilot is active noise cancellation. Now we have the Audi multimedia interface in here, we have got our iPhone on there right now, you can get different pigtails for this so this can not just be iPhone, you can put a USB�pigtail on there and use your thumb drive. The panoramic sunroof over my head right here is standard on this Prestige edition, by the way. Behind, for the second row, you have got a fixed glass panel. Everyone gets a pretty airy overhead. ^M00:02:34 [ Music ] ^M00:02:37 >> Now, of course, with an $11,000 Prestige package, you darn well better get a backup camera and you do luckily. It's going to give you trajectory information of those yellow lines. And of course, you change the mode of the warning blocks for whether you are parallel parking like so or when you are parking in a traditional sidebyside parking lot configuration. Down here is the Audi drive select. You have got individual, which you can customize. Comfort. Auto, which is the middle or normal. Dynamic, kind of sporty. And what these do is ride hurd over four different parts of the vehicle. The engine power response curve, the aggressiveness and the shift curve of the automatic transmission, the way that the suspension is being tightened up or kept comfortable, and the dynamic steering, which is how sharply this steering tracks. The individual one is the most fun to play with because you get to go to the car menu and here's where you make your own mix. So that's a very powerful way to configure this vehicle's behavior. Up here in the engine room we have got a relatively petite motor, 3.2 liter, V6FSI is their direct fuel injection technology. You can hear it, sounds a little like a diesel, right? Those are the injectors making a slightly diesellike noise. It doesn't print in the cabin, but you do hear under the hood here. 270 horsepower, 243 pounds of torque, 0 to 60 in 6.7 seconds or better, and 18.23 is your MPG. The Q5's power plant isn't very exotic on paper aside from direct injection, but it works very well with the tiptronic gear box, especially thanks to the genuine effective nature of Audi drive control and, of course, their quattro allwheel drive. Now we found we could push this Q5 pretty hard and enjoy it, even with an automatic transmission. But you have to wonder rather wantingly about the euro speck Q5 which gets a 7 speeds stronic duel clutch. Remember, we have the optional Audi drive control on our vehicle, which among other things does run the suspension system. So, if you drive a Q5 without that option, you may find a different ride quality. Okay. Let's price the Audi Q5 Prestige. Wow, that's a lot of money, $49,000 base, but remember, 11,000 of that is the Prestige trim level, which includes just about everything you like in this car. About all you add to that ala cart that you have seen here, the Audi drive select, that four mode that changes everything about the car, that's 2,950. ^M00:04:57