Audi News
Audi Reveals A7 in Event at Pinakothek der Moderne
By by: George Achorn, photos George Achorn and Audi AG
Jul 27, 2010, 18:06

“The car is just wow (inhale)… I mean… w-o-w,” says the woman presenting the new Audi A7 at Munich’s hip and very cool Pinakothek der Moderne museum. Okay, maybe it’s in the script but the presentation is heartfelt and genuine. And to be clear, this new fastback 4-door coupe from Audi is nothing short of sexy, which just makes us all the more positive she’s not faking it.

As Audi moves to ‘fill in the white space’ between its models it will be the new A7 that is most likely to illicit such an effect. Think raw sex appeal of the S5 combined with the luxury of an A8 and you start to understand her tone.

Progressive design, of course, is the most obvious element of the new A7 and that’s likely why Audi design bosses Wolfgang Egger and Stephan Sielaff begin the car’s presentation with a bit of designer speak, using design tape as they would forming a new model in order to emphasize the lines overtop a giant suspended drawing of the A7 in profile. There are more drawings, poster sized stacked on every table or post card sized lining the stairs of this cavernous design museum. The message is clear.


“That C-pillar reminds me of the Audi Coupe S from the 70s… but not retro,” I say afterward to Audi exterior designer Cesar Muntada Roura as we stand admiring the new Audi A7 following its reveal. The Spaniard smiles and responds, “Of course there are basic ties but it is not retro in any way. There is no reason to look back.”

Cesar shows us around some of the design elements and details that may be lost in print or pixels. The elemental Audi Tornado Line along the shoulder bears a sharp crease marked by an impressively precise narrow bit of horizontal bodywork. The shaping would be trick in steel, which the rear fender I’m caressing happens to be, but what is seemingly even more impossible is that it lines up perfectly with the rear door, then front door, then front quarter panel. These latter three are all made of aluminum he points out, and those two metals don’t just bend the same way. They have completely different properties. Audi’s decades of shaping aluminum have paid dividends in its ability to shape the A7. That is for sure.


Turns out there’s plenty of aluminum bodywork on the car, including the hood, front quarter panels, doors and rear power lift back. The frame itself is steel, a larger take on Audi’s versatile MLB modular longitudinal engine component set that’s much closer to the next generation A6 in composition and size of footprint.

The design theme continues inside where the cockpit is one of the most aggressive of any Audi. From the A8 the car gets the new Google Map enabled MMI system with onboard Wifi hot spot, the trick shift-by-wire transmission control mechanism and audio-gluttonous Bang and Olufsen audio with its retractable sound lenses. Opt for the layered oak trim and the environment is even more opulent.


About that trim, it was first shown in the Sportback Concept last year in Detroit. Interior designer Johanna Hoch smiles as she explains. “There was this journalist who wrote about the concept”, she tells me with a smile one might see on a cat that’s just dined on canary. “He said ‘it’s very pretty, but this will never make it into production’.”

“Did you plan to produce it when you put it in the concept?”

“No,” she responds with another smile, “but when he said it couldn’t be done…”

That journalist basically called out Johanna Hoch. He effectively called out Audi. Seems the folks in Ingolstadt don’t like to be called out and we've always known they savor a challenge. Like the benchmark Audi TT, the layered oak trimmed dashboard is nearly identical to the concept car and is perhaps the most stunning element in a very rich cabin. The wood, we hear, will be optional – a late intro for Europe and in time for the car’s North American debut.


Slotted between A6 and A8, with a so-called Sportback lift gate, suggestion of the car’s direct competitors is immediately debatable. Low-slung and sexy the car is more Porsche Panamera or Aston Martin Rapide in appearance than the upright and crossoverish BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo. We pose the question to Audi AG CEO Rupert Stadler and his list is more targeted. Stadler mentions the 5 Series GT, the Mercedes CLS and its closest rival in from the Jaguar XF.

In Germany the A7 will make use of Audi’s 3.0T FSI paired with quattro and 7-speed S tronic DSG. The car will also be fitted with Audi’s 3.0 TDI that, when paired with front-wheel drive and the Multitronic CVT, will be capable of 5.3 liters per 100 km. That’s Euro speak for 44 mpg. Impressive.


Interestingly, North America will get its own unique drivetrain that pairs the 3.0T with the A8’s impressively quick shifting 8-speed Tiptronic transmission. A Sport Differential as seen in the Audi S4 will also be offered as optional.

Audi plans to sell 200,000 A7s over the car’s lifecycle and that amounts to about 30,000 per year with most cars bound for Europe, the USA and China. Likely this number includes expected S7 and RS 7 variants which will likely be powered by the upcoming 4.0T FSI. These two variants though are a story for another day. For tonight, with this car on this stage… all we can say is wow.

Check out more photos from the event via the photo gallery button below.

For more discussion on this story, click on the link to our discussion forums to the left.	For more photos of the car in this story, click on the link to our gallery at the right.

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