Our idea of luxury changes regularly. What qualifies as indulgent and fashionable in one moment can shift in the next. These cycles seem to be speeding up every year.
That doesn’t always work out in our favor.
Fine dining near my Washington, D.C.-area home, for instance, now means tasting menus full of wave after wave of tiny dishes made with ingredients from many cultures. I enjoy them and have learned a lot from them. But fine dining used to mean a perfect steak. And I’m still excited when I find that.
What does this have to do with the 2025 Audi SQ7, you ask? A lot. To explain, I’d have to sit you in the driver’s seat, ask you to turn on the seat massager and adjust the 23 speakers of the Bang & Olufsen sound system, help you find Dynamic Mode, and watch as you mashed the accelerator and heard that glorious twin-turbo V8 snarl to life.
The 2025 SQ7 is, of course, a 2025 model year car. But if you spend time test-driving its rivals, you’ll realize it doesn’t seem like one. It’s closer to what the automotive industry found fashionable when this generation of Audi’s Q7 luxury sedan debuted … back in the 2016 model year. Audi will likely replace it next year (though they haven’t officially announced that yet).
The SQ7 is the high-performance, ultra-luxury version of a 7-seat SUV design nearly a decade old. America’s tastes change faster than that. But strap in, fire it up, and I bet you’d love it.
My tester carried the tech-oriented Prestige package, the athletic-oriented S Sport package, the luxury package’s added leather, that 23-speaker system, 22-inch black wheels, and the Black Optic package — in other words, everything.
It retails for $116,640, including a $1,195 destination fee. Steep, yes. But this is filet mignon seared by a master.
An Engine for the History Books, with MPG to Match
Most rivals have gone to some form of electrification — at least a mild hybrid system, if not a full plug-in hybrid option. The SQ7 is old-school.
This drivetrain unites a 500-horsepower, 4.0-liter biturbo engine with an 8-speed automatic transmission, good for 568 lb-ft. of torque. Audi claims a 0-to-60 mph time of 4 seconds, but some testing organizations have managed a little under that.
It sends power through Audi’s by-now-legendary quattro all-wheel-drive system.
Let’s get one thing clear — Audi’s 4.0-liter V8 and the quattro system each deserve to sit on plinths in the automotive hall of fame (a thing that exists only in our collective imaginations). Uniting them is reason enough for this car to exist.
The engine’s soundtrack is sonorous and deep. Its acceleration is brutal in the best way. It can’t make a 3-row family SUV feel small, but there’s something impressive about sitting at a stoplight in both the largest and the quickest vehicle in sight.
All-wheel steering makes it surprisingly agile, and the active roll stabilization found in the S Sport package keeps it flat in corners. The Audi Drive Select system makes it an automotive multitool with many drive modes and customizable adjustments to suspension and engine response to create your own.
But if a big, unelectrified V8 is a throwback in 2025, so is its fuel economy. The EPA rates the SQ7 for 15 mpg in the city and 21 mpg on the highway. In practice, I got much less than that. I’ve driven more fuel-efficient full-size pickups.
It all feels a little classic in 2025. Sometimes the classics are what you want. But you can’t help but notice that even the AMG version of the Mercedes-Benz GLE adds a hybrid system. Ditto the BMW X5 M Competition.
Screens and Switches Like a 747
That sensation of slightly dated luxury continues to the cabin.
The setting is sumptuous, with real leather (a bright red in my tester, adding drama to the cabin), and a headliner in Audi’s sophisticated Dinamica microsuede.
The driver faces a digital instrument screen. In the center sits a touchscreen handling entertainment and navigation. Below that is a smaller, 6.8-inch diagonal screen controlling the climate and seating functions.
Under all of that sits a row of metallic-finished buttons and knobs duplicating many of those functions.
I appreciate real knobs and buttons. But it’s all a little much. It reminds you that, in 2015, when this car debuted, we all thought cars filled with screens were the height of luxury. In 2025, with our screen addictions, it feels like overload.
More recent Audi designs have simplified all of this, consolidating screens.
I don’t want to overemphasize user interface design. The truth is, you get used to how your car works pretty quickly. Few of us drive around in a car from one brand, thinking, “This presentation looks neater in other brands.”
But it does. The SQ7’s complicated controls would give me pause, but I’d get over them for that engine note.
Seating in the second row is comfortable for adults. The third row, however, is a little small for anyone past middle school.
I thought I’d seen every automotive technology. But I was surprised when the SQ7 started counting down the seconds until a stoplight turned green in a little driver’s instrument-screen icon. This trick only works at specially equipped stoplights, but I did see it more than once.
The Bang & Olufsen system is excellent, with depth and concert-hall space in the sound.
Aging, But the Best of Us Are
There’s a limited audience for something like the 2025 Audi SQ7. But Audi knows that, and doesn’t build too many of them.
The SQ7 offers a fantastic engine, perhaps the grippiest all-wheel-drive system ever devised, and all-wheel steering. It wraps it in a subtly attractive package and fills the cabin with creamy leather and several screens.
In truth, that’s what we all thought of as luxury about six or eight years ago.
Luxury felt pretty damn good six years ago. You might want to secure it for yourself into the 2020s.
However, if the spirit of the SQ7 appeals to you but you’d like a little more up-to-date cabin, I strongly suspect Audi will give us that with this car’s successor fairly soon.
When it arrives, it will likely suit our notion of luxury in 2026 — tasting menus and fusion flavors. If you prefer something meatier, get it while you can.