Audi Q7 2007 Review

The national launch for the Q7 last year involved a trip across Australia, including the Simpson Desert.

And there is a switch inside the behemoth SUV which simply says "car" and takes you to the pneumatic suspension settings which you can vary according to your circumstances.

While most owners may ride around on "comfort" settings, there is also the option for "offroad" and "lift" which takes you to dizzying heights.

Now this may be intended so you can cross swollen creeks and maybe even dig out underneath if you get bogged on a big sand dune, but I know what it's really going to be used for.

Speed bumps.

Let's face it, the $85,700 kid carrier is rarely going to see dirt, sand, creeks or such.

Its main duties will be ferrying the kids to school and in the seven-seater option it can also take a basketball team to the Saturday morning game.

That means negotiating the gnarly urban terrain with its many potholes, speed bumps and sloping gutters.

There is a little rat-run I sometimes take on the way to dropping off my daughters at school. It involves no fewer than seven sharp speed bumps in less than 500m.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

In one low-slung sporty street racer, I was forced to attack the bumps on an angle so as not to return the vehicle to the car company minus several kilos of plastic front spoiler.

But with this beast, all you do is hit "car", rotate the knob to "lift" and punch the button.

Up she goes and over you go, no stopping.

And I think the local residents are thankful that I don't hit the brakes, then roar away as most other drivers do. I know the noise of sudden braking and acceleration would annoy me if I lived near one of these suspension busters.

Anyway, back on track.

The Q7 I drove was the lusty three-litre diesel.

Except for a flat spot just off idle, the car is a torquey monster with more go than Paris Hilton on a weekend in Sydney.

From the outside, it looks a lot like a beached three-tonne whale, but I imagine it is difficult to design something this big and make it look like anything else.

However, the interior is up to Audi's magnificent stylish standards.

Sumptuous leather, brushed aluminium, gadgets galore, wood trim. It's all here.

Passengers are also well catered for with separate airconditioning controls.

The third row is handy, but only for temporary tenants, amputees and small children. At least there is some room behind it for luggage.

When the third row is folded away, the cargo area is cavernous.

I didn't just drive this one to school and back. I took the family on a trip to the Gold Coast hinterland, up to O'Reilly's and down the four-wheel-drive-only Duck Creek Rd to Beaudesert where I lashed out on a Sunday roast special at the "Beauy" hotel.

It was yet another great off-road adventure straight out of the pages of Brad McCarthy's Dirty Weekends book.

There were no swollen creeks to cross, but the big SUV straddled the rocky path and descended the steep drive with aplomb.

You barely knew you were on a dirt road.

However, the air suspension did make one passenger in the second row car sick.

Air suspension tends to do that. It has a floaty feel.

On the return trip, I screwed the air suspension down and there were no complaints from the crew that hunkered down and went to sleep in the luxurious and quiet cabin.

With a combination of school runs, highway and even some four-wheel driving, the big diesel drank only 10.5L/100km, which is exactly the factory claimed economy figure.

The only problem was that when I went to fill up at an Ipswich servo, it had only one diesel pump and the nozzle was too big.