Behold and Wonder: The 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan

Is it cultural differentiation, or the car-makers' take on genetic manipulation? Maybe it’s going hybrid as applied to auto bodies -- or nothing more than novelty for its own sake. Regardless of what's behind it, taking its cue from the International Kongo Kruiser Motor Gypsy (or whatever that is) above, the DNA of traditional car models has undergone a freakish shuffling of late.

Good Goth: The 2012 Audi A7

Thus the hatch-backed and richly named 2012 Audi A7 3.0 TFSI quattro Auto Tiptronic Sedan joins with crossovers, roadster pickups, sport wagons, other four-door coupes and the rest of the shape-shifting vehicles to have emerged from Dr. Frankenstein’s Unconventional Car Windmill.

Awaiting the 2012s

While more than one of these combined-purpose monsters – the BMW 5 Series Gran Turismo being one example -- make for dubious auto aesthetics, the Audi manages to blend its disparate parts into a pleasing shape that nonetheless brings drama to the party.

Swooping rearward from a trapezoidal grille flanked by broad air-intakes, Xenon headlamps and LED running lights -- the A7’s charging character-lines travel the length of the car to arrive at a rear deck onto which its fastback roof merges in Wagnerian style. This ends at a nicely integrated set of taillights surmounted by a hidden rear spoiler that manifests whenever the Tiptronic Sedan achieves 80 mph, and only merges back into the car’s goth-like corpus once its speed returns to 50. Not only does this design represent a serious departure from Audi’s past look of softened utility, it's transformational as well: for the A7 serves as the basis for the forthcoming 2012 Audi A6 sedan.

A seven: mere conceit or mythic clue?

We didn't attend the press introduction where this might’ve been covered, but the A7’s styling also appears, for want of a better term, seven-happy. Maybe it’s us, or just maybe it’s part of a hidden message that the car’s stylists set into its bodywork with coordinates for finding the Lost Iron Shield of Beowulf or some-such. Can’t really say. Whatever the reason, we found the A7’s (often reversed) sevens enclosing rear-quarter windows, describing the shapes of taillights, spectrally appearing on the dash, surreptitiously posing as door panel décor and otherwise obeying the will of their unseen master.

But one needn’t be beguiled by the Tiptronic Sedan’s semiotics to note that this scarab is both stylish and sleek. At least that’s what we infer from the thirty-something males who fall into a trance at each sighting of the thing. These strivers must constitute the Audi’s core demographic, for it’s a cinch the witches who make up the condo parking polizei hereabouts -- the harridans who banished the visiting A7 from the guest lot's Sacred Space -- aren’t contenders.

Not for them the leather and aluminum-look appointments that highlight the car’s handsome and quiet interior with its ample head and leg room. Nor have hags any interest in whatever magic lies in the Audi's smartly turned-out dashboard, with its large instruments and accompanying digital read-outs that approach those of a jet-pilot in their information load. Not so long as the hurly-burly’s undone, and the neighbors come and go.

The test car was a Dakota Gray wraith listed at $68,000 and equipped with -- as part of Audi's "Prestige Package" -- 19-inch wheels, a rotary-dial-operated nav system, front-seat ventilation and a seven-inch Driver Information System that ascends robotically from the dash as the car fires up with a muffled rumble at the command of its start button. Compelled to heed the phantom call of its numerology, we took the A7 down Interstate 70 and thence to the town of Severn.

Having pioneered westward expansion as the National Road, I-70’s come a long way from the days of the stogie-chewing wagon drivers who first headed out of the morning sun toward Wheeling. A broad, gently curving  stretch of blacktop, the Appalachia-bound highway provides a good setting for a demonstration of the A7’s performance. 

It was amid farms and fields set against a blue September sky that we set its direct fuel-injected 3.0-liter V6 to the task of getting the quattro to go for throttle up along its claimed zero-to-60 range of 5.4 seconds. With 310 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque, the car launched smoothly enough, but things only got serious once its supercharger gave it the whip hand. After this, the large sedan gathered speed in manner impressive for its power to weight ratio. We approached the 80 mph point at which the 3.0 TFSI’s spoiler was to deploy, noting that while the car’s ride was not the most liquid we’ve experienced, its eight-speed automatic – equipped with Tiptronic manual-shift operable either by means of a gear selector or optional wheel-mounted paddles – made up for it with seamless shifts.

Even with the mad power surges, we were averaging something in the range of 20 to 25 miles per gallon.

Along the secondary roads leading into Servern, the Audi’s nav system drew us past a succession of suburbs and miracle miles while driving relentlessly toward the Mythic Thingy we sought there. En route, the A7s handling lacked laser-like precision but nonetheless performed in a capable and athletic way partly owing to such adaptive Audi engineering as that provided by its all-wheel drive system. Under ordinary conditions, this promotes European rear-wheel-drive balance and handling by delivering power to the car's front and rear axles on a 40/60 basis, while also dynamically transferring power fore and aft in response to wheel slippage. Under more adverse circumstances, the Audi's driver can elect for full-time AWD. In addition, the A7's intelligent breaking system corners while lightly slowing the inside rear wheel for an unusual level of control.

We applied those antilock-assisted brakes at Severn, the car’s nav-system having curtly announced that we'd reached our final destination. Here stood a crossroads which, while sporting strip malls at all sides, was absent the sole Seven-Eleven that might receive the A7 in benediction. There was a Royal Farms Store though – just no Iron Shield of Beowulf.