First Drive Review
If you want to find out what’s brewing deep within Audi, mark the annual Wörthersee GTI festival on your calendar. It’s there where pet projects get directly exposed to the VW Group’s bigwigs—namely, advisory board chairman Ferdinand Piëch and CEO Martin Winterkorn—bypassing the more normal, hierarchical procedures. And if Piëch and Winterkorn like what they see, the concept might just show up in dealerships. Prime examples of vehicles that have taken this shortened idea-to-reality path include the 256-hp A1 Quattro and the vehicle discussed here, the SQ5 TDI.
Gas to Diesel, Concept to Production
The SQ5 was previewed three years ago in Austria as the Q5 Custom concept. Wider and lower than a standard Q5 and powered by a 408-hp, 3.0-liter supercharged V-6 gasoline engine, it was the starting point for an upcoming family of high-powered SQ models. But once engineering commenced, Audi decided to focus on a diesel version instead. The switch was triggered partly by the imminent availability of a sound-augmentation system that would help provide appropriate noises for the first S crossover.
It’s also the first time Audi’s high-performance group has worked on a diesel vehicle. The production SQ5 uses a twin-turbo 313-hp, 3.0-liter V-6 TDI; it’s the same engine that’s in Europe’s A6 Avant, which we drove last year. The engine is aggressive and impressive—it simply transforms the Q5’s character when compared with the single-turbo 245-hp, 3.0-liter diesel that will be offered in the crossover here for 2014. The transformation is particularly noticeable when you select dynamic mode, which sharpens the responses of the engine, chassis, and steering. There is far less turbo lag in the SQ5, and it delivers significantly more grunt across the entire power band. This leap is a bit surprising. The regular Q5’s 3.0 TDI already produces 428 lb-ft of torque; the SQ5 engine increases that figure to 479 lb-ft, and it’s available from 1450 to 2800 rpm. And thanks to the artificially enhanced sound of the SQ5, there is no mistaking the two engines; the hi-po version is accompanied by a sharp, V-8–like growl that’s audible even from outside the vehicle.
