2024 Audi RS 7 Performance Review: The Price Of Speed And Self-Awareness

Audi made the 2024 RS 7 Performance a little more excessive than the "regular" RS 7 before it, and if that's not a perfect illustration of the car industry being comical, I'm not sure what is. Nudging the power and torque outputs above the 600 mark is, a cynic might say, a clear and calculated response to the hefty output in Mercedes-AMG and BMW's rival four-door-coupes. At the same time, superabundance sells, and it's not like the RS 7 lacks the courage of its capable convictions.

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As is well-evidenced elsewhere in Audi's line-up, the RS red square makes a few, key promises. Power is a given. Like BMW's M division, and Mercedes' folks at AMG, the Audi Sport people won't grace a trunk lid or grille with their badge unless it delivers on speed. Yet the RS 7 can't afford to stint on luxury either, not if it's to justify its roughly $130k starting price.

What the Q5 doesn't have is the RS 7's stupendous engine: a 4.0-liter twin-turbocharged V8 with — in this Performance form — 621 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of torque. It's paired with an eight-speed Tiptronic automatic transmission and sport air suspension as standard, and Audi says it'll do 0-60 mph in 3.3 seconds. That, frankly, feels like a conservative estimate.

Clearly, going fast in a straight line is no problem at all. When you hit the first corner, meanwhile, standard Quattro AWD, all-wheel steering, and a sport rear differential leave what is — at almost 16.5 feet long — a long car feeling deceptively short and lithe. Dynamic steering weighs in to reduce the amount of wheel turn required in more aggressive maneuvers.

The only thing missing, in fact, is the RS sport exhaust system. That's inexplicably a $1,000 option, but anybody considering skipping it should probably be escorted from the Audi dealership and bundled into an Uber home.

Some cars delight in driving fast. The RS 7 may not hit the gas pedal itself, but it's far, far too easy to glance down on the highway and find you're doing well north of 80 mph without even realizing it. Legal speeds feel like dawdling, the thrum of the V8 and the impressive degree of sound insulation (dialed-back for 2024, but still mighty effective) conspiring to hold the real world at arm's length.

That's marvelous for long-distance road trips — a two-hour jaunt back home from the airport felt like a doddle — but the Audi's stacked superlatives leave you feeling like you barely if ever, tap any significant percentage of its overall potential. No, the RS 7 isn't the only performance car that'll be past 70 mph before you hit the redline in third gear, but combine that with its bubble-like isolation and you realize you truly do need an Autobahn or a private track to make (and hear) the most of it.

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Ironically, then, I think I had more fun — or, at the very least, more frequent and legal fun — in the RS 7's little sibling. The 2024 Audi RS 5 Sportback we reviewed recently looks like you put the RS 7 through a photocopier at the 80% scale setting, and with 444 horsepower and 442 lb-ft of torque, its 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 engine is smaller and less potent. The upshot, though, is that you feel like you're actually able to make the most of that power.

Audi's options sheet, of course, offers plenty of room for your own personal excesses. Atop the $127,800 (plus $1,095 destination and $1,300 Gas Guzzler Tax) sticker price, this particular 2024 RS 7 performance had more than $22k of extras thrown in.

The Matte Carbon package was a sizable chunk of that, but the Bang & Olufsen Advanced audio system — at a sweet-sounding but wallet-wincing $4,900 — contributes significantly. $2,750 for the Executive package spreads leather across the dashboard and armrests throws in heated rear seats and power soft-closing doors, a heads-up display, and Remote Park Assist Plus. Another $1,500 gets the Individual Contour Seat package with massaging front seats and different leather.

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Then there's the Driver Assistance package, at $2,250 and — with its adaptive cruise assistance, side and intersection assistance, and rear collision assistance — another example of something I suspect Audi should just bundle in from the get-go. The $2,500 Night Vision Assistant is clever but would do better integrating into a head-up display rather than demanding you glance down at the driver's Virtual Cockpit screen to see its low-light camera feed.

There's a legitimate argument to be made that the RS 7 Performance — like the BMW, and the AMG — is actually too capable for its own good. So achingly fast, so adept at holding the limits of grip at arm's length, that regular roads (in the U.S., at least) are far too miserly in their permissions to allow you anywhere close to stretching your German sports sedan's legs. While that's also the case for many fast cars, ironically the Audi's refinement isolates you from the lower-speed silliness that something like an RS 5 Sportback gets to enjoy.

I like to think that I'm a rational person and, if not quite immune to flights of four-wheeled fancy, then at least clear-eyed enough to make sound, balanced decisions. It's a testament to the RS 7 Performance's ungodly allure, then, that even knowing, writing, and believing all of the above, I still desperately want one myself. 

Perhaps I'd cross-shop with a Panamera Turbo (the new E-Hybrid models are particularly appealing), but to my eyes, the Porsche just doesn't look anywhere near as classically handsome. Though perhaps not the first candidate for a daily driver you might think of, the Audi's voracious grunt and crisp cosseting make for a beguiling blend, one somehow both eminently understandable and charmingly ridiculous.