The German Family SUV That Hits 60 MPH Faster Than Most Sports Cars While Seating Seven

Picture the school run. A line of crossovers idling at the gate, parents clutching travel mugs, a cargo floor littered with backpacks and one rogue soccer ball. Nothing about the scene says menace. Then again, the family SUV stopped being slow a long time ago. Somewhere in the last decade, the performance SUV went from novelty to full-blown arms race.

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Porsche will sell you a Cayenne Turbo that keeps pace with its own sports cars. Lamborghini built the Urus and watched it become the best-selling thing the company has ever made. Jeep dropped a supercharged Hellcat V8 into a Grand Cherokee, called it the Trackhawk, and sent well over two tons of family hauler down the drag strip like a missile. Nobody blinks at any of it anymore. However, there is a large, untapped market that is missing out on all the fun.

Performance SUVs Forgot One Important Aspect

It’s no secret that slinging a large SUV to 60 MPH quicker than a sports car is great fun, but there is the catch, though. Almost all of them seat five. The Cayenne is a two-row car. So is the Urus. So is the Trackhawk. The second you actually need a third row, the list of genuinely quick SUVs gets short in a hurry, and the rare few that can both seat seven and out-drag a sports car tend to wear six-figure badges from AMG and BMW M. A fast SUV is easy. A fast SUV that carries the whole family is the hard part.

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Which brings us back to that green light. Slide a true seven-seater up next to a sports car, two child seats bolted in the back, groceries sliding around the trunk, and watch what happens when it goes green. This is not a thought experiment. There is a three-row, seven-seat SUV that reaches 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. It out-launches a Mustang GT. It walks away from a Toyota Supra. And it does the whole thing in the most sensible suit in the parking lot, which turns out to be the entire idea. So here is the car wearing it.

A Twin-Turbo V8 Wearing A Sensible Family Suit

Audi

Audi has just pulled the covers off the third-generation Q7, and sitting at the top of the range is the new SQ7. We broke down the full reveal when it landed, but the number that matters for our purposes is this one: 591 horsepower and 590 pound-feet of torque, from a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8. That is close to 100 horsepower more than the SQ7 it replaces. There is no hybrid system here, no electric motor quietly inflating the figure. Just a V8, a pair of turbochargers, and an eight-speed Tiptronic sending drive to all four wheels through quattro. Audi went the other way from almost everyone else this year, and American buyers are the ones who benefit.

Base Trim Engine

4L V8 ICE

Base Trim Transmission

8-speed automatic

Base Trim Drivetrain

All-Wheel Drive

Base Trim Horsepower

500 HP @5500 RPM

Base Trim Torque

568 lb.-ft. @ 3000 RPM

Base Trim Fuel Economy (city/highway/combined)

15/21/17 MPG

Make

Audi

Model

SQ7

Segment

Midsize Luxury SUV

The V8 is the same basic unit Audi dropped into the last RS6 Avant, so the pedigree is not in question. In the SQ7, it drives a rear-biased quattro setup with an electronically controlled locking rear differential, which means the SUV can shuffle nearly all of its torque to the back axle when you start leaning on it. It tightens the corners and sharpens the exit. There is only one engine on the SQ7 order sheet, so there is no agonizing over output. You get the V8, or you buy a regular Q7.

It is not all about pace, either. Hitch up the optional towing package and the SQ7 pulls 7,700 pounds, which covers a boat, a pair of jet skis, or a horse trailer. The new generation also brings a sharper face, split headlights, third-generation OLED taillights, and the option to black out the badging if you want the sleeper look turned up a notch.

Why The Sleeper Character Is The Whole Point

Here is the thing about the SQ7. It does not shout. Park it next to its rivals from AMG and Alpina, and it reads as a slightly more serious Q7, a family SUV that found a bigger set of wheels. The badges are quiet. The body is a tall, upright box. To most people in the school pickup line, it is invisible.

That is the appeal, not a shortcoming. The AMG and Alpina crowd announce themselves from a quarter-mile away, all flared arches and quad pipes barking at idle. The SQ7 plays it straight. It feels unflappable at 80 mph, then rips off a clean overtake without ever raising its voice. It does not want a fight. It just quietly wins the one you did not know you started.

The 0-60 Time That Embarrasses Genuine Sports Cars

Audi

Audi quotes 3.7 seconds to 60 mph and calls it best in class for the segment. That figure is worth a moment of suspicion, because Audi has a long habit of underselling its own cars. The outgoing 500-horsepower SQ7 carried a conservative factory claim, then Edmunds strapped its gear to one and recorded 3.9 seconds, with independent testing logging runs into the mid-3.5-second range. The new car makes nearly 100 horsepower more.

Read that however you like. The 3.7-second number is the floor, not the ceiling, and once the testing kit comes out after the SQ7 reaches dealers in late 2026, do not be shocked to see a three before the decimal with room to spare. Those quattro launches are brutally repeatable, too. This is not a one-hot-lap hero. It will do it again and again, in the rain, with a full load. And remember what is doing the running. This is a 5,467-pound, three-row SUV. That works out to roughly 9.2 pounds per horsepower, which is sports-sedan territory, achieved by something built to haul a hockey team.

The Sports Cars It Beats Off The Line

Ford

Names, then. Edmunds found the old, less powerful SQ7 already quicker to 60 than a Ford Mustang GT automatic by nearly half a second. The new one is quicker still. The same test team reckoned the SQ7 could smoke a Toyota Supra off the line. A BMW M2 does not save you either, not even with the slick eight-speed automatic that runs 3.9 seconds; the manual M2 at 4.3 seconds is simply not in the conversation. A Nissan Z never sees which way it went.

Sit with that for a second. These are purpose-built sports cars, two seats, low roofs, the works. And a seven-seater on air suspension beats them away from the line while carrying two child seats and a week of groceries. It should not make sense. It absolutely does.

The Family SUV Part Is Not An Afterthought

None of this would matter if the SQ7 fell apart as a family car. It does not. Seven seats come standard, and the second-row bench is wide enough to take three child seats side by side, which is a genuinely rare trick in this class. Prefer captain’s chairs? Option the second-row buckets, and you get a six-seat, business-class layout instead.

Cargo runs from 15.1 cubic feet behind the third row to 78.1 cubic feet with the second row dropped, and a power liftgate is standard. Be honest about the third row, though: it is a kids’ row. The new body is taller and roomier than the cramped outgoing car, but grown adults back there on a long trip will still file complaints. For school runs and sleepovers, it is exactly right.

Audi

The luxury proof points stack up where it counts. Ventilated and massaging front seats are available, the Bang and Olufsen sound system adds actuators in the seats that thump in time with the bass, and the panoramic roof switches from clear to opaque across nine segments at the touch of a button. It is a properly plush place to cover miles.

Air Suspension And Rear-Axle Tricks Hide The Mass

Audi

Physics says 5,467 pounds should wallow. The SQ7 mostly refuses to. Adaptive air suspension is standard, and the sport air setup drops the body by 1.2 inches and firms everything up when you ask it to. The rear-biased quattro and that locking rear differential do the rest, shrinking the SUV around you on a back road and steadying it on the highway.

The outgoing SQ7 earned real praise for the way its air suspension soaked up rough surfaces without going soft and floaty, paired with steering that was accurate rather than numb. The new car carries that hardware forward and builds on it. One beat of engineering explains the magic. The mass is still there. The suspension and the driveline just spend their lives hiding it from you.

Why It Is Shaping Up To Be The Performance Three-Row Bargain

Audi

Audi has not announced 2027 pricing yet, and that is the one number we are all waiting on. Here is the anchor that matters: the outgoing SQ7 started at $95,095. The new one will not be cheaper, but Audi has plenty of room before it gets anywhere near its rivals.

And the rivals have shifted. With the larger Q9 now Audi’s flagship SUV, the Q7 and SQ7 have slid down into the segment occupied by the BMW X5 and Mercedes GLE. That puts the SQ7 head to head with the X5 M, at 617 horsepower, and the Mercedes-AMG GLE 63, at 603 horsepower. Both hit 60 in the same 3.7 seconds the SQ7 claims. Both start north of $131,000 before you touch the options list.

Match the quickest cars in the class for acceleration, then undercut them by tens of thousands of dollars. That is the pitch. To be fair to the Germans across town, the extra money does buy genuine fireworks: a louder engine, more cabin theater, more badge cachet. If that is what moves you, go and enjoy it. If it is not, the math is brutal.

What You Give Up, and Why It Doesn’t Matter

The SQ7 is not flawless. It drinks premium fuel and plenty of it. The outgoing V8 managed 14 mpg city and 20 highway, and 591 horses are not about to sip. The options list climbs quickly once you start ticking boxes. And it does not serenade you the way an AMG does. The SQ7 whooshes where the Mercedes bellows, a turbocharged exhale rather than a hard-edged V8 roar.

None of it lands as a deal-breaker. You are buying a seven-seat SUV that out-drags sports cars, carries your entire family in quiet comfort, and undercuts its rivals by the price of a second car. A slightly muted soundtrack and a thirst for premium are a small toll for that. The SQ7 does not need to shout about what it is. The 3.7-second clock does all the talking it needs.

Sources: Audi, The EPA