Audi RS7 Sportback Review & Prices

Plenty of cars come with engines producing 150hp, but there aren’t many models on sale that pump out that much power per passenger. The Audi RS7 Sportback, with its 600hp 4.0-litre V8, is one of them.

This slinky four-door sports car fits into the same uber-fast four-door niche as the Porsche Panamera and Mercedes AMG GT 4-door and gets loads of visual treats to help you tell it apart from the standard A7.

Those massive exhaust tips, for example, are the largest fitted to any Audi RS model and they sit within a completely redesigned rear bumper. Step to the side, and you’ll spot a set of 21-inch alloy wheels that cover beefier brakes and sit within wider wheel arches. In fact, only the bonnet, roof, boot lid and doors are shared with the standard A7 – if you were wondering.

Audi hasn’t made quite so many sporty changes inside the RS 7 Sportback, but you do get some more supportive RS-branded seats with electric adjustment to help drivers of almost any size get comfy. There’s also a flat-bottomed steering wheel and some cool (both to look at, and to touch) aluminium gearshift paddles.

Watch: Audi RS7 Performance v BMW M8 v Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S drag race

RS logos are scattered liberally about the place too, from the floor mats to the RS-specific dials on the Virtual Cockpit display. This screen looks lovely and it’s dead easy to customise using buttons on the steering wheel. The rest of the infotainment system is pretty easy to get your head around too, but the touch screen heating controls are annoyingly fiddly to use when you’re driving.

Passengers in the back don’t get quite so many toys to keep them distracted, but at least there’s plenty of knee room to go round and you can choose to swap the RS7 Sportback’s standard two-seat configuration for a three-seat bench for the first time. Tall adults will wish there was a little more headroom, however.

You can’t level any space-related complaints at the Audi RS7 Sportback’s boot, though. Sure, it’s smaller than the capacious load bay you get in an Audi A6 Avant, but it’ll swallow more luggage than a Porsche Panamera Turbo or Mercedes-AMG GT 4-door.

Like these cars, the Audi RS7 Sportback comes with a turbocharged V8 petrol engine. It’s pretty much identical to the one you get in an RS6 Avant and produces 600hp. This whopping output is sent through an eight-speed automatic gearbox and split to all four wheels through Audi’s quattro four-wheel-drive system. This, along with a clever launch control system and some seriously wide tyres, helps the RS7 Sportback leap from 0-60mph in less than 3.6 seconds.

How fast your Audi RS7 Sportback can go isn’t determined by its engine, however. Instead, it’s decided by how much you fancy paying Audi when you order it. The RS7 Sportback is limited to 155mph as standard, but you can fork out for various performance packs that use software tweaks to bump this up to 174mph and 190mph – a bit like in-app upgrades on your phone.

You don’t need to pay extra for adaptive air suspension to make the Audi RS7 Sportback comfortable at these speeds though – it comes as standard across the range. This system also lets you stiffen everything up to carve through twisty backroads and works alongside the optional four-wheel steering to help you dispatch hairpin bends without worrying about the RS7 Sportback’s lengthy body clipping any roadside obstacles.

Sure, even with all these features in their sportiest settings, the Audi RS7 Sportback doesn’t feel as playful as a Mercedes-AMG GT 4-door. Its gearbox isn’t as responsive or as quick as that in a Porsche Panamera, either, and the steering doesn’t give you the same level of confidence as in the Porsche on an unfamiliar road.

That said, the Audi RS7 Sportback strikes an excellent balance between B-Road blaster and comfortable cross-country tourer. You’ll just have to decide whether you think its slinky body is worth paying extra for over the equally purposeful, but much more practical, RS6 Avant.

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No Audi with an RS badge is ever going to be what anyone might consider ‘affordable’ but the RS7 gets off to a slightly awkward start by actually being more expensive than the glorious RS6 Avant estate that sits next to it in the Audi showroom. OK, so the gap isn’t massive (it’s around £4,000) and the two cars potentially appeal to different customers, but the fact is that the RS6 is just as quick, just as good to drive, arguably just as handsome, and you can have it for slightly less. 

The RS7’s case becomes a little better when you start to look at potential alternatives from outside the Audi family. A Mercedes-AMG GT four-door, for example, is at minimum £30,000 more expensive than the Audi, and only boasts slightly more power for your cash. If you’re looking in Porsche’s direction, then the choice is split — you can have a less powerful, 544hp Panamera 4S e-Hybrid for around £20,000 less than the Audi, or have a much more powerful 680hp Turbo S E-Hybrid model for around £20,000 more. 

There’s one other left-field choice. We’re still awaiting the arrival of BMW’s new plug-in hybrid M5, but in the meantime there’s the just-arriving new i5 Touring estate in M60 spec, which gives you two electric motors developing 601hp which gives pretty devastating straight-line acceleration, and tax-friendly zero-emissions driving. Worth a thought, at any rate. 

Manages to be big and bulky, and refined, but also fun on twisty roads. You have to have the suspension in Comfort for British bumps, though. 

In town

The Audi RS7 Sportback is a big, long car and one with massively swollen wheel arches to cover those fat tyres, so it’s possibly not the easiest car to manage in town. Certainly, you’ll want to keep those gorgeous alloys away from any nasty kerbs… 

It does help that the RS7 comes with rear-wheel steering, which can deflect the rear wheels by up to five degrees, which does help to tighten the turning circle a little, but it’s still takes 12.1-metres to get around, so u-turns and mini-roundabouts are always going to feel a bit on the tight side. 

For a high-performance car, it's relatively smooth over bumps thanks to the adaptive suspension, but you’re always aware that it’s quite firm, and potholes are to be avoided. 

Visibility is actually quite good, even with that sharply sloping rear end, and there’s a good all-round camera system to help you tell whether you’re going to fit into a tight parking space or not. There’s also an automated parking system which will do all the work for you, and the adaptive radar-guided cruise control works at low urban speeds, which is helpful in these days of constantly-watchful speed cameras. 

On the motorway

Needless to say, there’s abundant performance when you need to accelerate to get up to cruising speed when joining a major road or motorway. Indeed, up to the UK’s legal limit, you barely even need to use more than 5,000rpm on the rev-counter, so muscular is the RS7’s mighty V8 engine. Just flex your foot and you’re there. 

Once again, the adaptive cruise control and lane-keeping steering help here, as they take some of the sting out of longer journeys, while the suspension continues its good work of feeling suitably sporty without becoming hard and uncomfortable. Wind noise is almost entirely absent, but you will pick up some road noise from those big tyres.  

On a twisty road

The rear-axle steering that helps (if only a little) to make the RS7 more manoeuvrable in town helps again when you get to some proper corners, as it now turns in the same direction as the front wheels, making the car more stable and more sure-footed, yet also more agile at the same time (witchcraft!). 

There’s also variable ratio steering which means you won’t have to waggle your wrists around quite so much for tight corners, and even though it’s a large car, the RS7 is really, really good in those corners. 

Take all of that V8 engine performance, add the grip and traction of four-wheel drive, and you have a recipe for a serious rocketship. One thing — make sure you have thought through the various electronic settings before you head out, so that you can have the engine, steering, and gearbox all in Dynamic mode, but the suspension set to Comfort — it’s the best way to set the RS7 up for bumpy British back roads. The trade off is that there’s a little more lean in corners, but it’s a compromise well worth making. 

Very practical by performance car standards, but the luggage cover annoys

Up front, the RS7 basically lifts its cabin from the RS6, so it’s actually very practical. There’s plenty of storage space, starting with a storage box under the front seat armrest, decent door bins, and a lidded tray between the front seats which is where you’ll find the cupholders. A little more stowage for small items like keys and so on would be helpful but it’s pretty good. The high-backed front bucket seats are wonderfully comfortable, and the driving position is good too, so there are no worries there. 

Space in the back seats

In spite of that sloping roof, the RS7 is actually very roomy in the back, and all but the very tallest rear seat passengers will be able to get comfortable with plenty of legroom to go with the surprisingly good headroom. Yes, the RS6 Avant estate is roomier again, but the difference isn’t as vast as you’d think. There are useful door bins, rear seat air conditioning controls, and ISOFIX points in the outer seats (as well as in the front passenger seat). You won’t really be able to squeeze anyone into the middle rear seat, though, as there’s a large transmission tunnel in the way and they won’t have anywhere to put their feet. The rear armrest has neat fold away cupholders and a small, shallow storage area too. There’s also a handy little pop-up sunblind behind the rear seat headrests, although it’s slightly annoying that there are no matching shades for the rear side glass. 

Boot space

Once again, we have to call in the RS6 Avant as a point of comparison here, and once again the rapid estate wins, with 565-litres of space compared to the RS7’s 523-litres. Still, the RS7 isn’t exactly lacking for room, and the big tailgate (electrically powered, of course) makes loading up pretty easy even if the space gets quite shallow towards the edge of the boot. 

One annoying factor is that the luggage cover is a solid item, split into two parts, which is awkward to remove and which can’t be stored in the car when you’re not using it. The RS6’s simple retracting luggage blind makes far more sense. However, the RS7’s seats do fold mostly flat, and there’s a ‘ski-hatch’ opening in the middle for long, narrow loads so by performance car standards, it’s wildly practical. 

High-quality with a great touchscreen system, but lack of buttons can frustrate

The RS7’s cabin is very Audi. And by that we mean it’s built to a standard that few car makers can truly match, with gorgeous materials and excellent quality, but it is a bit dark and hard-edged in places. 

As with the RS6 and many other Audis, the infotainment system is split across two screens — one for maps, music, and anything else and one for the climate control. This is sensible in some ways, as at least you can always find your climate controls quickly, but the haptic touchscreen just isn’t as intuitive nor as simple to use as physical buttons, so can become annoying. The screens and menus are also a little on the dark side.

That’s true of the digital instruments too, but at least they’re clear and pretty simple. That is until you activate one of the RS driving modes. These, RS1 and RS2, can be pre-set and quickly selected so that you can have one setting that’s all about comfort and ease, and one that turns everything up to sporty-11, and flick between the two whenever you want to. That’s great, and rather like BMW’s similar M1 and M2 buttons, but the downside is that Audi has given both RS modes a unique layout for the digital instruments which makes them look like a duff Gameboy screen from the 1990s. Why? 

The gorgeous Valcona leather on the seats helps make up for some of that, but beware the options list for the RS7 — for instance, the ‘Carbon Twill’ trim panels, which you assume will be glossy race-car-style carbon fibre, actually look and feel almost like rattan furniture panels, and are really hard and scratchy to the touch.  

Clearly, any car that uses a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine with 630hp, has four-wheel drive, and a large, roomy body is not going to do all that well when it comes to fuel economy. And so it proves. The RS7 has an official fuel consumption figure of just 23mpg, and if you’re even slightly using that wonderful engine’s performance, you’ll soon see that plummet into the low teens. Better buy some shares in Shell, and right quick. 

As for emission, well 272g/km of CO2 puts you well and truly into the top tax bracket, so VED road tax is going to be £2,745 plus the £390 expensive car levy. If you’re a company car buyer — and many will be buying their RS7s through a company — you’re looking at £700 per month in Benefit in Kind (BIK) tax charges as a bare minimum. If it’s tax that bothers you, the hybrid-powered Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid (with its 39g/km of CO2) is a much better bet. 

The A7 (on which the RS7 is based) scored well in the Euro NCAP crash tests, taking home a full five-star score with a 91 per cent rating for adult occupant protection, 85 per cent for child occupants, and 81 per cent for protecting vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. The standard autonomous emergency braking helps in that regard, and while the RS7 is a potent performance machine, its standard quattro four-wheel drive and massive brakes will help to keep it under control. It’s a shame then that Audi does put some of the most useful safety equipment — such as that adaptive cruise control — onto the options list, alongside high-beam headlight assistance. Surely at this kind of price level you could expect such items to be included. 

While Audi might be a by-word for quality in many people’s minds, the unfortunate fact is that it’s not doing so well in reliability and customer satisfaction surveys right now. In fact, the most recent Auto Express Driver Power satisfaction survey put Audi only two steps off last place, so clearly there’s some work to be done. It’s also worth bearing in mind that a specialised high-performance model such as the RS7 is going to come with some expensive servicing and maintenance costs, as everything from tyres to oil is going to cost more. 

At least the warranty is reasonable — as standard, Audi gives you a three-year, 60,000 mile warranty and you can extend that out to four years and 75,000 miles if you’re prepared to pay extra. There is a five-year, 90,000 mile option but that will cost a big chunk of money for a model such as the RS7.