Audi Q5 – A True Multitasker Offering Luxury, Handling And Utility All At Once

How complicated car-shopping has become. Niche products are all the rage as (German) manufacturers try and outdo each other, and niches-within-niches are all too common. Can you even count the multitude of roles fulfilled in something like the Porsche Cayenne S Diesel tested elsewhere in this issue?

And just how many boxes does a car need to tick before you’re keen enough to go kicking tires? Nowadays, to even consider a car, one’s list of criteria is longer than JZ’s charge sheet.

For starters, it must be able to munch Nissan GT-Rs on any given track, but also be dexterous enough to waft over a Grade 5 off-road course, and so luxurious that Grace Mugabe won’t spill her Bombay Sapphire & tonic on the back seat. And have the space to haul a ton of fried chicken in the boot for urgent delivery in the Northern Cape. Yet only quaff 3l/100km.

It’s a chess match of plausibility versus wants versus wants and needs. And whichever way you look at it, it’s a nigh-on impossible ask.

Because nobody keeps a gimp suit stuffed in the cupboard for the one Pulp Fiction re-enactment party they’re hoping to get invited to. Or stashes a Durex in their wallet for the nanosecond that the stars align and Michelle from Marketing finally remembers your name at the water cooler – and even more miraculously agrees to drinks after work in a moment of insanity.

You don’t buy a Land Rover Defender for the only time all the bays are occupied at the shopping mall and you feel the insatiable need to salute your inner tosser by engaging low range and parking on the pavement. Or drive a Ford F250 because your moisturizer doesn’t fit in your Mini’s glove box. Or wreck your credit record buying an M3 to teach your neighbor’ s laaitie in the sticker bombed, souped-up 1998 Corsa the one lesson he’ll never forget.

Realistically, for 364.5 days of the year, a Chery QQ will more than meet your all driving needs. Because it does everything you ask of it reasonably well, almost all of the time.

So here’s a tip for Trevor (or is it a plan for Pravin nowadays?) in the run-up to next year’s elections: all South Africans, even if they’re Patrice Motsepe, must at least own a Chery and pay e-tolls. We’ll be an equal society in no time.

Far closer to reality and desirability is the Audi Q5, and specifically this one, with 200kW and 400Nm from its S4-derived, supercharged three-liter engine. It gets to 100kph in 0.6 of a second faster than a Golf GTI, provides the 12-inches one-minute-man elevated look in traffic that people are willing to shell out for when shopping for SUVs, and the ride quality doesn’t crush your testicles the moment you yank it into gear.

It changes character, too. The (optional) Drive Select’s default mode is Efficiency, and in this mode it feels as if you’re towing something really heavy, or there’s an elastic attached to the rear axle, all in the name of saving fuel. Stop/start cuts the fuel bill by a small margin. However, on the other side of the sensibility scale there’s Dynamic, which sees the Q5 suddenly gain the agility of somebody who’s trying to dodge the release of the spy tapes.

So what we have here is the perfect car for our president. Thing is, he’ll need a driver, too. And an advisor. Here’s my number …