Eating between meals makes Q5 a rich dish

Jun 9 2009 Steve Orme

Eating between meals makes Q5 a rich dish

IN the newspaper this weekend a man with a bad barometer habit predicted that by 2080 Cornwall would enjoy Mediterranean summers and warm, damp winters making it an ideal growing climate for viticulturists. Chateaux Newlyn-sur-Mer here we come.

This is upsetting news. Not only will I be well and truly known as 'the late' by then but more immediately I am due in the region next month and so playing British seaside roulette with the weather rather than basking in the certainty of scorchio. Sunstroke or trench foot, place your bets now.

Interestingly, since the employed classes were forced by recession to send their children up mill owners' chimneys and the car industry fell into a bottomless pit, global warming is apparently not entirely due to the evil motorist. It's more a question of who ate all the pies? Mr car is no longer the great Satan, Mr Creosote is.

Porritists now say eating is breaking the sky. More specifically eating meat or cheese. Apparently, despite recent political resignations, there are just too many cows and sheep in the world. And that afterv a cabinet reshuffle.

According to the great man himself fat is a climate change issue. Really? I think of it more as a waistband issue.

Presumably, although they cannot delight in a spanking new Range Rover, people can still enjoy a jolly good feed of dead beast. Therefore this must be stopped.

Dispeptic cattle are bad enough but you, lardy boy, are contributing a additional tonne of CO2 a year, putting you in tax band Z.

The answer, it seems, is a diet of low-gas potatoes. And if you could just build yourself a dank, dark croft and get the kids a character building dose of diphtheria, 19th century utopia would be complete.

In the meantime the coast looks clear to talk about Audi's little brother for the Q7, the Q5.

In the main crossovers lean towards the dainty end of four-wheel drive. Cosmetically appealing rather than butch and beefy. Effeminate even, which says something about the target market.

No so the Q5 which looks like it may march right up to the last surviving polar bear and punch its murderous lights out.

As is normal with Audi there is a model for everyone, even vegetablists. We will look at he two-litre TDi S-line but you could choose a bigger three-litre diesel engine or a 3.2 FSi and a combination of trims.

On the road the six-speed TDi is satisfyingly able, not sluggish at 9.5 seconds to 60mph or greedy with 42mpg a reasonable target. And even for a car that feels it could have been crossed with a small country, there is an agility and lack of handling drama you may not expect.

On top of that standard fixtures and fittings make the Q5 good value. Climate control, alloys, traction control and leather seats all feature along with approaching vehicle warning lights on the wing mirrors and parking proximity alarms.

Needles to say all this is put together with the normal Audi faultlessness and the best quality trim materials.

So would I pay the menu price of £30,635? Yes but that's not the full story.

You see what makes the Q5 so tasty is extras like the technology pack, the drive select option which allows the suspension and throttle response to be set up to your personal taste and adaptive cruise control. Not to mention over a grand's worth of mobile phone and audio equipment and a host of lesser bolt-on kit that pushed the price of the S-line to almost £40,000. That's leaving aside the £50 ski bag which may prove rather redundant.

So you see, the basic S-line very healthy, eating between meals makes it a rich dish.