Why did I start to love Audi Q7 after 600 kilometers?

Just like all novels about domineering CEOs, before the CEO discovered the innocence of the young girl and the young girl discovered that the silly boy was the CEO, the hero and heroine must have looked down on each other and even blackened and beat each other.

Before I started to describe how I fell in love with Audi, I was not really an Audi fan. I even often said, not without ridicule, that it was just a "lighting factory." As a method of attacking by generalizing, the term "lighting factory" seems to be very "experienced" in online battles. Similarly, in the sports circle, you can say that Yao Ming is just tall; in the literary circle, you can say that Han Han is just a good driver. In this way, their merits and efforts can be passed over.

In this slightly awkward and even weird atmosphere, I started a three-day Audi Q7 exploration trip from Yunnan to Guizhou.

Brand perception from real experience

As a BMW 5 Series owner, I have never driven an Audi series car. I drove the Audi Q7 for a 600-kilometer road and mountain road trip. I had a lot of experience and comparisons. But I don't want to make a crude comparison between the two brands. There are two reasons. First, my experience with sedans is not applicable to the full-size big SUV Q7; second, cars are like beauties, thin and plump, so it is meaningless to make such a comparison. I would rather talk about the novel experience Q7 gave me.

As for the appearance of the Audi Q7, I will skip the details for now, because I don’t think there is anything to complain about. The large but not bloated shape, the sharp but restrained lines, and the headlights that are just the right touch to the eyes and eyebrows, the genes of the Audi family are everywhere but not so aggressive. It does not show off like a nouveau riche, selling its own design language and aesthetic attainments.

In short, the new Audi Q7 is perfect in industrial design and can withstand anyone's long-term viewing. Just like Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, who focused on expression in his paintings, the so-called spring clouds floating in the sky and flowing water on the ground, even if you look back suddenly a thousand years later, you will still feel that the people in the paintings are full of spirit and interest.

In fact, Chinese people are very fond of the appearance of Audi series cars. You should know that in 2015, Audi brand sales in China reached 567,888 units, accounting for 30% of the Chinese luxury car market. If the exterior design is mediocre and vulgar, I am afraid that this data will be greatly discounted. Buying a car is the same as buying clothes. We are not afraid of aesthetic convergence, but we are afraid of wearing the wrong clothes.

As for the interior, there is no doubt that the Audi Q7 has basically equipped you with all the fun things that can be found on this earth, not to mention the MMI system that Audi has always been proud of. From the perspective of software engineering, the fluency of the MMI system and the friendliness of the interface have surpassed many mobile phone manufacturers. Not only is the logic clear and reasonable, but there is also no lag or obstruction. Coupled with the extremely comfortable damping adjustment of the knob, every "tick-tick" rotation is a pleasure. There will be a kind of joy that the designer's ingenuity is deliberately hidden very deeply but is suddenly discovered by you. This joy belongs only to you personally. It is a mysterious and cunning moment when users and designers resonate.

Seriously, if Audi were asked to design a mobile phone operating system, I would definitely pay for it.

Add to that all-round massage seats, 23 B&O surround speakers and ambient lighting that changes with your mood, and except for the lack of a Simmons mattress, when you sit in this new Audi Q7, you will be filled with joy and have nothing to ask for, which is indeed a true portrayal.

In addition, I am not a parameter party, and I don't care about the various parameters of the vehicle. Because I know that it is somewhat unromantic to talk about the parameters of the Q7 SUV with a price of one million and the blessing of the Audi brand. It's like you can dislike Lin Chiling, but you really can't say with disgust that Lin Chiling has thick legs and a strong waist. This is too against your will. For a car at this price, the engine, gearbox and other configurations are actually not important. What is important is to see how much this car can meet your expectations, is it 60 points, 90 points or 101 points?

Many years ago, DIY computers were popular in university dormitories. Students tried every means to squeeze the surplus value of CPUs and graphics cards for a little performance. Do such stories still exist today? No one cares about computer performance. To be frank, most users probably don't care what CPU an Apple laptop has.

The same is true for cars. Thanks to the rapid development of various precision machining technologies and the premise of lightweight cars, most cars on the road now have excessive performance. When the Q7's 2.0T engine bursts out 251 horsepower, the 3.0T engine brings 333 horsepower, plus the smooth 8-speed gearbox and the improved quattro full-time four-wheel drive system, even the mountains and rivers are easy to navigate.

This is indeed the case. After 600 kilometers of highway and mountain road experience, I want to express this attitude: if you have previously sneered at Audi and thought it was just a lighting factory that was good at playing with light bulbs, then please experience it carefully, and maybe you will think that this prejudice is really unreasonable - lighting factory? That's right! But apart from this, Audi really has other good things that can dazzle your eyes, and the appeal of the Audi brand is bursting out from this.

In addition to its beauty, the Q7 is also a driver's car

Because you don't understand, you have prejudice. But when you understand, you have a great chance to fall in love with those people and things you didn't understand before.

The Twenty-Four Turns is part of the Burma Road. Mr. Huang Renyu, a historian whom I love, once fought here. As a member of the Chinese Expeditionary Force, he wrote countless communications and the immortal "Yellow River and Green Mountains". If "The 15th Year of Wanli" gave Mr. Huang a Kafka-like dreamlike quality, then this "Yellow River and Green Mountains" is a true portrayal of him personally. The Burma Road is almost buried in the dust raised by the wheels of history, so much so that a scholar cried out in grief, "No one knows that history has passed here."

Fortunately, Audi has not forgotten this history, and when retracing a section of this Burma Road, as a city SUV with a huge two-ton body, it is hard to imagine that it could be as light as a swallow and flutter through the "Twenty-Four Turns" section of the Stilwell Road that had been ravaged by artillery fire.

As the name suggests, the 24 turns is a winding mountain road with 24 sharp turns. The most common vehicles on this road are motorcycles. When I drove the Q7 up the single-lane mountain road, I saw a cliff a thousand meters above sea level in the right rearview mirror. This means that the driver cannot be distracted at all, and it also puts extremely high demands on the vehicle itself. After all, only precise control experience and strong enough power can help the driver complete this task.

If you want to do your work well, you must first sharpen your tools. In fact, because the Q7 is a sharp tool, it took me less than fifteen minutes to complete this journey. Every time I turned the steering wheel, stepped on the accelerator or brake, the Q7 gave me great confidence. I could feel that the tires did not slip on the muddy road, and the power distribution on the four wheels was reasonable. On some bends, I even had the courage to pedal at a speed of 60 kilometers per hour. It is worth mentioning that the fastest record on the 24 bends is said to be 8 minutes.

This is my first time to experience Audi Q7. At first, looking at the buttons and indicator lights on the screen, I was a little scared. It is no exaggeration to say that I didn’t want to drive an unfamiliar car on a winding mountain road at first. This was to be responsible to myself.

However, there are buts for everything. When I drove from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain, which was only a gentle slope of three or five kilometers, I found that my previous concerns about unfamiliarity were just groundless worries. Why do I say that? Because the friendliness of Q7 is truly from the heart. As long as you can drive, you can get familiar with it in a few minutes and rush onto the road immediately. It is not a fiction that you can come when you are called, fight when you come, and win when you fight. Q7 can do it, because Audi has already thought of everything you need. All you have to do now is to hold the steering wheel tightly, look ahead, and then step on the accelerator and brake. Just like what Steve Jobs said when he first launched the iPhone, even your grandmother will definitely use it. Yes, Q7 is such a car. Take a deep breath, go up the mountain, and leave the rest to Audi Q7.

After coming down from the mountain road, passing through the small town market, the dense and irregular flow of people really tests the car's vision and quick response to emergencies. Although the Q7 is a large car, thanks to the designer's credit, even the blind spot behind the A-pillar is transparent and clear, even if a puppy suddenly jumps out from the side of the car body, you can still see it clearly.

After getting on the highway, the Q7's 3.0T engine starts to show its power. The acceleration is so fast that it is very satisfying. And you can judge from the acceleration that the engine starts to let the turbo intervene at about 1500 rpm, which makes the Q7 easy to change lanes and overtake.

In addition, because the car is too quiet, I was curious and wanted to hear at what speed the engine would transmit the roar to my ears. Two thousand, three thousand, until it was close to 4,000 revolutions, the dull engine roar came as expected. In addition, the sensitivity and stability of the Q7's brakes can be regarded as a pleasant surprise. I don't want to say much about the sensitivity. Cars of this level are very sensitive, and the safety factor is rich enough. It is not worth being serious. From the perspective of the experiencer, stability during braking is a more important factor. When I tried to brake from 120km/h to 70km/h, my companion who was sleeping soundly in the co-pilot seat did not wake up. It's not that he slept soundly. In fact, my own body did not lean forward due to the sudden brake. The Q7 should have been optimized in deceleration. It did not stop abruptly, but like Tai Chi, it used softness to overcome hardness, and easily unloaded force with a little effort. In just a few dozen meters, every centimeter of deceleration was arranged without abruptness.

The Q7 can be easily controlled on the highway and has twists and turns on mountain roads. On every section of the road, the Q7 accomplishes its mission. As an ordinary experiencer, knowing those cool English terms does not add more topics to talk about the technological power behind it. I only know that the Q7 has a user-friendly interface, is easy to use, and there is no need to worry about power and control. It is a big but smart driver's car.

When I stood on the top of the mountain, facing the serpentine road below, thinking of the war decades ago, I couldn't help but feel mixed emotions. At that time, we couldn't even find a driver, but now with the help of Audi technology, ordinary people can easily reach the top. This is the change of the times and the power of history, rolling forward like a wheel - Confucius said on the river bank: Time flies like an arrow.

A good Audi car, a thrilling history, has left more than one legend. The driver's car, feel the changes of history, experience the power of technology, if there is a chance, everyone should go to the Burma Road to tell others: history has passed here.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.