6 Reasons You Should Care About The New Audi Q5

You might be reading thinking this couldn’t be anything further away from the sort of car you want to buy. Fair enough; it’s a chunky SUV that’s mostly going to sell as a 2.0-litre diesel to company car owners, but Audi is making some cool things happen right now, and lots of them are right here.

Starting at £37,150 for, yes, the sales rep-tastic diesel, the Q5 gets all sorts of features that the company hasn’t brought down to this level before. We drove the car for the first time out in Mexico, and as we did with the Q2, we’ve listed some of the reasons why we’re impressed.

Quattro has gone ultra

The all-wheel drive system on the Q5 can drive the front or all four wheels. That’s nothing new, but quattro ultra uses an eletro-mechanical clutch behind the gearbox and a dog clutch at the rear differential to completely disengage the rear drive shafts and reduce the frictional losses to almost nothing. There’s no centre diff. It means that quattro ultra-equipped cars are vastly more efficient than those using a Haldex or torque-sensing system.

The software it links to analyses the grip conditions every tenth of a second with incredible sensitivity, comparing various factors to analyse how much grip there actually is – before any slip even occurs. There are many more data streams in this setup versus the old one, which makes it more accurate and faster to respond. Even if you’re being deliberately ham-fisted there should never be more than half a second’s slip at the front wheels. Could be an interesting avenue for performance cars, no?

Air suspension is awesome

Steel springs are fine. Obviously. But air suspension is way cooler. As standard the Q5 will sit on steelies with a minor amount of tunability via the drive select module, but the ride height can’t change. That means it’s a compromise – too high to be ideal for stability and too low to be really capable off-road.

Ticking the Active Air Suspension option box – brace yourself, it’ll be expensive – gives you a massive 60mm worth of play in the springs. The lowest setting is best for twisty roads and high-speed cruising, while the highest is specifically meant for low-speed clearance over rocks and the like. It adjusts in seconds, and you can see it working by watching the bottom of any window. Other benefits besides being really cool? It self-levels no matter how you load it up or what you tow. Up to the weight limit, anyway, which is still to be confirmed.

There are powerful petrol and V6 diesel engines

The single petrol engine is just a four-cylinder, but thanks to a clever turbo it pops out enough power to keep you interested. Lag has been chopped right down from Audi’s days of old. For context it’s still not in the same league for throttle response as something normally-aspirated, but for an everyday SUV the 2.0 TSI turbo gives you impressive response and a big lump of boost.

But the mightiest engine is the 282bhp V6 diesel, which pummels your kidneys with many torques and much wow. It’s less eager underfoot than the petrol, but wake it up with a good prod and the Q5 jumps into attack mode with a 0-62mph sprint in the region of five seconds flat. It’s quick – properly quick for short sprints between corners. Audi has massaged 4bhp more out of it versus its predecessor, and it’s awesome news that the old six-pot isn’t dead yet.

It's amazingly refined

There are a few main reasons why people end up selling hot cars, with running costs at the top of the list. But in a close second is usually that they get tired of their loud exhaust/uncomfortable ride/stripped interior on their daily commute. Ideally you have a comfortable daily and a thrill-a-minute weekend toy, but we all know what inevitably happens to dailies.

Fair enough, the Q5 isn’t that exciting to drive. It’s the comfortable everyday biffabout rather than the Sunday morning blaster, but it’s quieter and more refined than ever. The fact that this comes despite 20-inch wheels and diesel power means that Audi can build cars with qualities that break expectations for the class. SUVs aren’t supposed to be this easy to enjoy. How soon before that two-car garage can finally be streamlined into one with no compromise?

There's cool new tech

Tech is a big selling feature these days. Plenty of us resent it, but that’s the reality. The Q5 has been given a feature straight from the luxury end of the Audi stable in the shape of a huge touch pad, on which you can write letters with your finger.

The only problem is that it’s best if you use it with your writing hand so it’s bad luck for lefties in Europe and the US, and vice versa in the UK. Passengers will love it, though, for selecting media tracks and entering nav details. The touch pad is the fourth input channel, after the MMI rotary dial, steering wheel controls and voice control. Choices, choices.

But...

You don’t get all this for free. Adaptive Air Suspension, fancy leather upholstery and more powerful engines all add to the cost of the thing. A little under £40,000 can soon turn to a little over £50,000, and that’s big money for an outwardly unremarkable family car. The residual values are looking good, especially for low-mileage Q5s, but any spend on options is ultimately money you won’t get much back from.

Audi’s biggest competition for anyone who wants a Q5 but doesn’t want to pay for it is Volkswagen’s Tiguan. It’s not as advanced and not quite as refined, but it’s in the region of £11,000 cheaper if you’re willing to drop four-wheel drive. And most people are. It’s going to be interesting seeing whether Tiguan sales go up or down.