Driven
It’s a sedan! It’s a coupe! It’s a . . . wagon? SARDINIA, ITALY
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HE MERCEDES -BENZ CLS GETS credit for leaping
one rung up the coolness chart solely by virtue of how good it looks. Mercedes calls it a coupe, even though that implies it’s a two-door car that’s shorter than the sedan upon which it was based. It is neither. If you’ve snickered at Mercedes-Benz’s designation, get a load of this: Audi is also calling its 2012 A7 Sportback a coupe. In this case, it’s even more misleading, since the A7 isn’t a sedan—it’s (gasp!) a four-door hatchback. That means the marketing folks in Ingolstadt think Audi has created a vehicle so attractive that its looks alone can rescue it from the humiliation of being called a wagon, blowing straight past the mundane moniker of sedan and boosting it right into the chic coupe category. Did it work? Well, did your eyes just wander back to the photos to take another confused look at the sexy rear end? We bet they did. And we bet you’ll agree that the A7 is just as good-looking as the CLS, hatch or not. The fact is, we’re huge fans of hatchbacks. Thanks to its derriere’s design, the A7 performs one trick no CLS can do: at the push of a button, its motorized rear hatch ascends, revealing a cargo hold large enough to sleep two six-footers comfortably with the rear seats folded—and no contortionist training required. Placing a body in the trunk of the Mercedes, like those of other formal sedans, generally requires gags and a rope. When the seats aren’t folded down, the A7’s rear quarters are bright and roomy, with plenty of headroom. Like the CLS, it seats only four, although that’s likely a marketing decision rather than an engineering restriction—the center of the rear
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The A7’s slightly droopy butt is punctuated by a spoiler that rises automatically at speed. The spoiler is surely a functional necessity, as it’s not pretty when viewed from behind.
bench contains no console or hump to prevent someone from sitting there comfortably. Only the seatbelt is missing. There are two cylinders missing from the engine compartment, too—at least compared with the CLS. As penance, the 3.0-liter V-6 is supercharged, and an eight-speed automatic transmission transfers power to the standard Quattro all-wheel-drive system. The automatic isn’t available in Europe, where the A7 comes with either front-wheel drive and a CVT or all-wheel
Automobile | December 2010
True PDF release: storemags & fantamag
