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.

Few four doors look so sleekly sinuous as Audi's A7 series, and to that, the RS 7 adds a dash of sinister. The long hood and smoothly arching roofline play perfectly against the RS style treatment, with the more angular grille, vented front hood edge, and flared side intakes cranking up the visual aggression. 21-inch 10-spoke wheels are standard, as is matte titanium grey exterior trim.

The $7,650 Matte Carbon Package ousts both of those things. It throws on 22-inch 5-Y-spoke wheels — looking darn fetching in their matte black — and replaces the Audi badging to match. Matte carbon is used for the front blade, side sills, diffuser inserts, and mirror housings. Combined with the Nardo Gray paint (a little played-out by now, sure, but it suits the RS 7 still) and the result looks crisp and ominous.

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Ominous, meanwhile, has never been so practical. With the RS 7's power hatchback open, there's 24.6 cu-ft of easily accessed trunk space to play with. That's a mere tenth of a cubic foot less than the cargo room in a Q5 SUV.

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.

Right foot planted, and the RS 7's soundtrack provokes the sort of glories that medieval architects designed grand cathedrals to inspire. A throaty, gurgling bellow that unlocks above the 3,000 rpm point or thereabouts, taking on a saw-toothed howl that reminds us why big gas engines still have their appeal.

In Comfort or Auto mode, the Audi is relaxed if still ample in its excesses. The air suspension dials in more compliance, and if it wasn't for the lower ride height and more laid-back seating position you could mistake yourself for being in an S8 luxury sedan. Even the most casual departure from a stop light or sign is enough to leave most other traffic languishing in your mirrors.

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Switch to Dynamic mode, though — or stab the RS button on the steering wheel, to summon the most aggressive of the RS 7's settings along with custom driver display graphics — and things get just plain silly. At not far off 5,000 pounds this is not a lightweight car (and in fact it's the heaviest of the entire A7 family), but it pulls like something beastly and enraged nonetheless. All the while, exhausts aside, you're mesmerically isolated from the world outside, including road imperfections.

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16.5-inch front ventilated discs and 14.6-inch rear discs make sure that slowing is equally impressive. Audi offers an optional ceramic upgrade, but it's hard to imagine anybody actually needing it.

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.

Regularly-usable whimsy isn't the only hiccup here. Push with any degree of enthusiasm and the RS 7's 19.3 gallon tank is drained rapidly. While I saw 22 mpg on the highway — matching, in fact, the EPA's expectation for the Audi — its 17 mpg combined rating is only approachable if you show far more restraint than I'd be inclined to.

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Rear seat space is definitely better than in the RS 5 Sportback, though the protruding center tunnel with its touch panel HVAC controls makes this far more of a four-seater than the five that Audi suggests. Better, then, to claim a spot in the front, where heated and ventilated sports seats with honeycomb-stitched leather are standard.

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Quad-zone climate control, Audi's dual-touchscreen MMI touch response infotainment system with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a Bang & Olufsen 3D audio system are all standard. So, too, is a power sunroof, navigation, and a reasonably comprehensive safety package including front and rear parking sensors, a bird's eye view camera, front collision warning and avoidance assistance, and lane-departure warnings.

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.

Nit-picking about price and what comes as standard is probably missing the point, though, when it comes to something like the RS 7 Performance. It's not like BMW's similarly-specified and priced M8 Competition Gran Coupe, or Mercedes-AMG's GT 63 S 4-door Coupe (which, with its starting price of $170k+, leaves the Audi looking like a gosh-darned bargain) are any less lavish or demanding. In all three cases you're getting superlative speed along with luxury and exclusivity.

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It'd be positively negligent of me, then, to not mention Audi's wildcard alternative. The RS 6 Avant Performance isn't just one of the few, rare wagons available in the U.S. still, but a genuinely jaw-dropping slap of pace-with-practicality built around the same 4.0-liter V8 TFSI engine as the RS 7 Performance. If even greater exclusivity wasn't enough of a draw, along with space for five and their luggage, it also starts at $2k less than the four-door coupe. Or, you could throw caution to the wind and try to grab one of the 85 Audi RS 6 Avant GT wagons coming to the U.S. at the end of the year. 

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.