Audi SQ5 - A Sports Sedan

Sweet exhaust notes, crisp shifts, deep well of power. No-feel steering, 2.2-ton Tessie, why are we sitting way up here?

The cues are all there in the SQ5, Audi’s first entry in the performance mini-ute arena. Grip its small-diameter, thick-rimmed, flat-bottomed, three-spoke steering wheel with its prominent contrast stitching, finger-tips poised behind the shift paddles, eyes registering the positions of the white needles on the gray-face gauges. Securely belted and bolstered in the sport seat, you’re in charge of a tool devised for drivers of serious intent. Everything you see declares it.

The cues are all there in the SQ5, Audi’s first entry in the performance mini-ute arena

Which amounts to a tease when sitting in miles of stop-and-go traffic behind an accident. Plenty of time, then, to fiddle with the giant glass sunroof (standard at the $52,795 base price) and explore the infotainment alternatives in the MMI Navigation Plus package ($3400, the priciest of the seven options that lifted our car’s sticker to $61,420). There’s another collision a few miles away, the radio tells us, so we head for Exit Plan B. glancing down into the adjacent Volvo wagon, we see its driver texting with his left thumb while guzzling Red Bull with his other hand. How do these crashes ever happen?

It takes most of an hour of detours and delays before we find open road and can goose the 354-hp supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, whereupon two terrific things happen that don’t in the more quotidian Q5: Exhaust flaps open so the quad tailpipes can cut loose with a blat, and the everybody’s-got-zone ZF eight-speed automatic snaps off crisper-feeling shifts than anything this side of a dual-clutch gearbox. The sharp shifts are attributable to the special tuning of the Tiptronic controls.

The SQ5’s engine – specific to North America, since the European SQ5 is a diesel – is closely related to the 333-hp version in the S4 and S5 (itself an uprated version of the 272-hp six in the Q5 3.0T). But the SQ5 gets revisions that raise out-put another 21 horsepower, mostly in the higher reaches of the rev band, as suggested by the 347 pound-feet of torque plateauing way up at 4000 rpm.

Here, the S model’s tightened suspension pays off with noticeably less roll, dive, and squat than in a standard Q5

Sporty shifts notwithstanding, driving the SQ5 quickly is not so much a dive for any available corner as it’s like being carried forward on a tidal wave, a giant swell propelling the vehicle. The broad torque delivery and responsive transmission render driver-selected gearchanges more useful for adjusting the volume of that delightful exhaust note than for managing velocity. The shift paddles are fun toys, but they’re likely to see as much daily action as that waffle iron in the bottom kitchen cupboard.

The extra thrust the SQ5 gains over the S4/S5 mostly compensates for the cross-over’s added mass. It’s 4427 pounds on our scales, or 18 pounds above the claimed curb weight (ours had $800 21-inch wheels replacing the standard 20s). That’s more than 400 pounds heftier than the S4 sedan. Ingolstadt won’t sell the S4 wagon here because . . . well, because American buyers strongly prefer that their lifestyle vehicles sit high, so Q5 sales are actually outpacing those of the A4, long Audi’s bestselling model.

The SQ5’s engine is closely related to the 333-hp version in the S4 and S5

Audi has been claiming a zero-to-60-mph time of 5.1 seconds since it unveiled the SQ5 at the 2013 Detroit auto show. We got 5.2, or 0.3 second slower than the 2010 S4 we tested. Still, a quarter-mile time in the 13s at more than 100 mph makes this one quick way to fetch giant sacks of dog food from Tractor Supply. Audi states a top speed of 155 mph; our tester says 152.

The brakes offer up a firm pedal, easily modulated, and deliver consistent stops from 70 mph in 153 feet with little dive and no fade – that’s 14 feet shorter than what we got in the 2010 S4 sedan equipped with similar Dunlop SP Sport Maxx GT summer tires.

Driving the SQ5 quickly is not so much a dive for any available corner

It’s more of a mixed bag when we finally get closer to home on roads that snake around lakes. Here, the S model’s tightened suspension pays off with noticeably less roll, dive, and squat than in a standard Q5. The 255/40R-21 Dunlops registered 0.87 g on the skidpad where the lower, lighter S4 circled at 0.93 g. The SQ5 feels a bit tentative in rapid transitions, making us wonder how much that sunroof up there weighs. Steering responds quickly off-center, but the system’s feel fares no better for all the tuning and grip; there’s little feed-back from the road to the driver’s hands, and the available adjustments just vary the weight from too light to awfully heavy.

But overall it’s a noble effort. The 2014 Audi SQ5 puts the right sounds and most of the sensations of a sports sedan into a crossover for people intent on hauling their cake and eating two-lanes, too.