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This sinister beauty here is the 2016 Audi S7.
It is a large luxury sedan with a fast back design, but it's also the sporty, more powerful version of the A7.
That means under the hood we've got a 450 horsepower twin turbo charged V8 that I can't wait to start up.
So let's hop behind the wheel and see what this sexy machine can do.
Okay so let's do the fun part first.
Under the hood, as I said earlier, we're powered by a four liter twin turbo charged V8 engine.
That's gonna get us 450 horsepower.
And 406 pounds of torque.
More than enough power to get this thing rocketing to 60 MPH in just 4 and a half seconds.
Now, that power is going to go through Audi's S tronic automatic transmission.
That's what they call their duel clutch automated manual gear box and it's a pretty good one the shifts are light and quick you've got pedal shifters and also a sport UUU From there the torque is going to be send to all four wheels and shifted around via Audi Sport Quatro system.
it's sporty for two reasons, the first we've got torque vectoring, which is going to actively shift power from left to right instead of responsively help us get a little bit more of push through a turn and really rotate this car around.
And second, because, the quatro system has a rear bias to it.
Actually, at its default state, it sends most of its power, about 60%, to the rear wheels.
And that's gonna give the car a sporty character, when you're accelerating and turning.
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The S7's gonna roll on Audi's adaptive air suspension.
That's going to have adaptive dampers, that help it to be soft when you wanna cruise.
And, firm when you wanna really chuck it into a corner.
And it's got, really cool features like, a little bit of auto leveling.
So when you, are really into a turn, or when you're stepping on the brakes, or really getting hard on the throttle, it can actually, do a little bit of auto leveling to reduce roll and squat and dive, and help the car feel really flat and responsive.
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with the normal heavy car when I was checking into the corner it was sort of roll over into it but the Audi system actually add the little bit a lift.
To the outside wheels, to help keep the car flat.
You get that same, outer leveling when you're accelerating and braking hard as well, so we do squat and dive.
So really cool, and helps the car feel responsive.
That's a lot of techno babble, but the end result is that this car feels really good when you're really pushing it, and it's both dynamic mode.
The torque vectoring, the adaptive suspension, the extra power going to the rear end, really mean that unlike a lot of all wheel drive cars, it's actually possible to induce a little bit oversteer in this when you chuck it into a corner real good.
But then with the flip of a switch, or a twist of the MMI knob down here, we can actually go into a very comfortable mode And this car, the steering lightens up, the suspension actually gets a little bit more muted.
You get less sort of feel through the seat of your pants and it becomes a very comfortable cruiser.
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Now for the nerdy stuff.
In the center of the dashboard we've got Audi's MMI infotainment stack.
And that is going to be controlled by this physical controller down here.
But recently we've actually seen a newer generation of this in things like the 2017 A4 and the new Q7 and compared to those systems this one looks just a little bit dated.
Then again, compared to just about everything else on the road, this is still a very high tech system.
We've got crisp [INAUDIBLE] graphics, we've got an always on web connection that does things like bring in Google earth imagery when you're navigating, and lets you do online web searches.
Compared to pretty much everything else on the road, this is a very technologically The advanced vehicle.
So unless you want the absolute best and newest from Audi, you'll do pretty well with this.
It's got a couple of years left on it.
Directly ahead of me we've got the digital instrument cluster that's gonna mirror a lot of the MMI functions.
Things like Choosing an audio source, looking at the maps with the Google Earth imagery right here, and initiating phone calls, all can be done right here from the instrument cluster without actually taking your hands off of the wheel.
I got a thumb roller, and a control knob and that's everything that I need.
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We're pretty close to fully loaded here which means we've got most of the driver aid functions at Audi's disposal here in the S7.
Things like adaptive cruise control that will maintain your speed on the highway but then slow down to keep a safe following distance with the lead car.
Things like lane departure prevention, that'll use the electric power steering to keep the car from drifting over the lanes if you don't use the turn signal.
Again, these aren't the absolute latest generations of the technologies from Audi, but they are still fairly well advanced.
And I think that most drivers in this price range are going to be impressed with what Audi has to offer.
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The S7 certainly earns its sporty pedigree with performance that seems to just get better and better the harder you push it.
And even though its MMI system is starting to age a bit, it's still one of the most tech forward cars on the road today.
The 2016 Audi S7 gets started at around 82,900 bucks, but as equipped here, close to fully loaded, you're looking at over $95,000.
