Gadgetory

this car has more checkboxes than a tax form sedan coupe station wagon sports car high-tech powerful curious styled let's drive the 2012 Audi a7 Sportback and check the tech along with all the rest the a7 is Audi's entry into this new mini rage of luxury four-door sporty and sometimes utilitarian coupes it's a tortured concept to be honest you could stretch it to include anything from the Accord Crosstour to Mercedes cls550 the Panamera and the Aston Martin Rapide for me though this is the one that gets it the most right and of course the big story on the a7 it's a completely new car in the Audi lineup they call it a sport bag but it's a four-door coupe with a hatchback access in the rear everyone hates the h-word on cars that are you know above 25 grand that's what it is when it opens up you've got a very large though sometimes shallow toward the back here cargo space but it's a big boy most folks are kind of surprised when I do this when this whole hatch is down it's a very strong long sloping style statement you've got this lift up spoiler here taken right from the pages of what a Porsche Boxter I do like that the doors are frameless makes easy ingress and egress though in the rear here the glass doesn't go all the way down now a lot of stuff in this car I've shown you before things like the Audi shifter in the way the gate works here electric parking brake here's the current MMI with nav tail radio and media and the four buttons that correspond to regional menus in the corners of the screen we've seen all that before including this touchpad here this is the latest thing on Howdy's MMI you can actually press these buttons when they're illuminated those are station presets or when you're in the mode of entering something texts like an address you can actually write it here with your finger and you'll recognise the Audi instrument panel the great clear gauges slightly canted in towards you and all that irregular region between them is a really nice beautiful detailed contextually changing display here's what's new on this car this flip up navigation screen right here in the dash notice as I go around the orbit here I have car settings my phone and communication stuff info we're going to get to you're going to love that navigation media and radio teased out separately and tone control teased out separately let's go back to info notice when I get there I've got this choice in the upper right that corresponds to this button and that goes online I go through that screen there and look at this would you like to do a data connection and their charges involved in all that not through my phone I'll prove it here's my phone I'm taking the battery out and I'll hit yes and we're connecting anyway Google logo in the bottom 3G logo next to it that's because this car doesn't need you to have any kind of phone to get online the tethering isn't the model it's right down here the magic is in the SIM slot that little SIM slot is a separate wireless account in this case it's t-mobile I've got 3G data as you saw the car gets online by itself once I get in there I can do a lot of stuff I've seen before here's weather again pulled down live I can say immediate vicinity for example here's where it gets interesting travel information so check it out Wikimedia powered loading stuff now I said immediate vicinity it's finding local landmarks and giving me either a snapshot or a map clip whenever it can from Wikimedia if I click on one of these it keeps loading and it pulls up more information tells me the distance to it gives me a larger example of whatever its representative thumbnail was and here's my description of what it is then if I want to go there after I've read it and said hey that's kind of cool set his destination this is a breakthrough in the way we navigate and I've been harping on this for years saying navigation without search is broken this is the best example yet in a car of what navigation should be I can do a google search and you saw the Google logo before four things in my immediate vicinity I just start typing the letters say and here's CBS Interactive because that's really immediate we're right next door to our building now the search can be a little janky in this case some of these are not related to CBS in any way to make any sense to me so I'm not quite sure what that logic is all about they could do a little honing on this okay now the third part of this tech trifecta you're going to get Google Earth powered navigation again a first being drawn in in real-time that's Google Earth that's not just a static satellite thing that's going to load and buffer within a 25-mile range as I Drive and I can also go plan view looking down at Google Earth or I can do this 3d flyover thing and you see how it overlays my route in light blue that's where I'm going to go you've got other colors over here for traffic you've even got traffic on nan freeways non major arterials the detail res is actually quite good anything from global view to zip write down and see the color of a building now the last part of this related to all this is while you've got that SIM card and they're doing all this wireless internet why not share that with your mobile devices and you can do that also now we did find on an iPhone 4 and an iPad one is we couldn't get this thing to connect I think it's a security layer thing we tried all security layers none of them would work but my Android device my Droid 2 hooked right up no problem so before you get in love with this cheque without e2 make sure it's compatible with your Apple device the current level of iOS or whatever device you're carrying now the gear shift gets us into the world of a lot of backup and nudge in technologies you see we've got trajectory 3 zone boxes they do them in shades of blue you've also got front and rear park sensors that are giving these zone bars around this overview pictogram of the car you can go to the just graphics screen if that works better for you you've got lots of settings here about the volume of the beeps and how much it beeps how fast this car has an almost amazing stop it absurd level of customization whatever you think of these cars prettiest damn engines on the road nice castings beautiful kind of a sandblast finish on everything some red accents and everything's been finished three litre v6 that has the power of a v8 they do that by having one of those guys that's the blower the supercharger never mind the T in the name it's not a turbo it's a supercharged motor this delivers 310 horsepower 325 foot-pounds of torque whenever you've got the turbo of the blower torque tends to be a little higher than horses zero to sixty for a 4,200 pound car kind of a chunky guy in 5.4 seconds very nice while still delivering 18 28 mpg that's not going to break the bank it always goes out to all four wheels which is also going to bring down the mpg a little so those numbers are even more impressive Quattro all-wheel drive and the only gearbox available is an 8-speed Tiptronic automatic as I mentioned this car does not have an overwhelming engine but man does it deliver the power is absolutely effortless like I'm merging onto a freeway now at a 90 degree turn with a bunch of traffic and I have no concern and that's why how out of the hole boom but without any kind of raw uneven punchiness from the engine this car has just got it around town totally tractable nothing about it feels like it's all hand in because the engines not over-the-top the powertrain is enough with enough in reserve I love cars like that where I can use 60 or 70% of the car on a regular basis as opposed to like 20% in a car that's just over brawny those are not fun to me as I mentioned totally silky all the inputs are great the pedals the wheel gearshift even the knobs and the switch gear everything has just the right feel to him I'm really big fan of living with this car day to day okay let's price an a7 Sportback now it's in the a6 class so the price isn't bad right out of the gate for the premium base trim it's about $60,000 delivered but to go CNET style you got to spend 3600 more to get up to Premium Plus that brings you a ton of stuff you've got navigation you got the Google you got the wiki stuff you've got the wireless internet through the car itself you've got the Wi-Fi hotspot in the vehicle the full front and rear package of sensors and camera the voice command it's one of the better price packages out there that is based on navigation I would do it absolutely what I wouldn't do is spend $6,000 for a Bang and Olufsen sound system that has never sounded like $6,000 to my ears and there are also some other pricey options I'm going to cost you several thousand more to get things like adaptive cruise to get the pre collision warning stuff and that's based on adaptive cruise and that would also get you the night vision assist that shows pedestrians in different colors as they get closer to your trajectory