Audi A7 Sportback

Audi A7 Sportback

Peruse the A7's spec sheet and, behind the sofa, a large, grey pachyderm stirs. Five doors, lifting tailgate, front-wheel drive, check; a trunk snakes gently over your shoulder in search of a currant bun. Look at the A7 photos and you realise that not only is there an elephant in the room, but that Audi has built a hatchback.

After years of telling the world that only a saloon is stiff enough for sporty German handling, Audi has now 'fessed up that while hatchbacks might be potentially more floppy, people like them. First it was the A5 Sportback, and now this: the new A7.

Big, high-strength steel side frames and complex bracing around the hatchback retain torsional strength, with cast-aluminium front suspension turrets just like Audi's top-model A8 limo. Doors, bonnet, hatchback and the front wings are hot-formed aluminium.

The result passes America's fearsome pylon side-impact test, but is stiffer and 15 per cent lighter than the outgoing A6 saloon (the A7's new chassis will underpin the forthcoming A6 replacement).

While the blurb pitches the A7 as a grand coupé competing with the newly updated Mercedes-Benz CLS, it's both more and less than that. It's also standout lovely in that utterly understated Audi mien – horrible Q7 excepted. There are even shades of Alfa Romeo's GTV6, Giorgetto Giugiaro's and Alfa Centro Stile's elegant Eighties coupé. Funny that Walter da Silva, VW/Audi's design grand panjandrum, ran Centro Stile at the time.