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This sinister beauty here is the 2016 audi s7 it is a large luxury sedan with a fastback design but it’s also the sporty or more powerful version of the a7 that means under the hood we’ve got a 450 horsepower twin turbocharged v8 that i can’t wait to start up so let’s hop behind the wheel and see what the 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 4 litre twin-turbocharged v8 engine that’s going to get us 450 horsepower and 460 pound-feet of torque more than enough power to get this thing rocketing to 60 miles per hour in just four and a half seconds that power is going to go throughout ease s tronic automatic transmission that’s what they call their dual
Clutch automated manual gearbox and it’s a pretty good one the shifts are lightning quick we’ve got paddle shifters and also a sport program from there the torque is going to be sent to all four wheels and shifted around via outtie sport quattro 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 responsibly to help us really get a little bit more of push through a turn and really rotate this car around and second because the quattro system has a rear bias to it actually at its default state it fins most of its power about 60% to the rear wheels and that’s going to give the car sporty character when you’re accelerating and turning the
F7 is going to roll on out ease adaptive air suspension that’s going to have adaptive dampers that help it to be soft when you want to cruise and firm when you want to really check 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 are 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 with a normal heavy car when i were chucking into a corner it would sort of roll over into it but the audi system actually adds a little bit of lift to the outside wheels to help keep the car flat you get that same auto
Leveling when you’re accelerating and braking hard as well to reduce squat and dive it’s really cool and helps the car feel responsive that’s a lot of technobabble but the end result is that this car feels really good when you’re really pushing it in its most 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 of oversteer in this when you chuck it into a corner real good but then with a flip of a switch or a twist of the mmi knob down here we can actually go into a very comfortable mode in 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 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 the physical controller down here but recently we’ve actually seen a newer generation of this and 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 a still a very high-tech system we’ve got crisp nvidia graphics we’ve got an always-on web connection that does things like bringing google earth imagery when you’re navigating or lets you do online web searches compared to pretty
Much everything else on the road this is a very technologically 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 going to mirror a lot of the mmi function 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 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 lane if you don’t use a turn signal again these aren’t the absolute latest
Generations of the technologies from audi but they are still fairly well advanced i think that most drivers in this price range we’re going to be impressed with what audi has to offer 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 it’s mmi system is starting the age of it
It’s still one of the most tech forward cars on the road today the 2016 audi s7 gets started around eighty two thousand nine hundred bucks but as equipped here close to fully loaded you’re looking at over $95,000 you you
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Audi S7: A Sporty Sinister Beauty – Roadshow By CNET Cars