We recently spent a few days with the new 2014 Audi RS 7, a sedan that could play both lead roles in Beauty and the Beast. The beauty part is hard to miss because it shares its knockout bodywork with the A7 and S7.
The beast lives under the hood and beneath a layer of plastic engine compartment dress-up parts. There's a 4.0-liter 560-horsepower V8 lurking under there, with a single turbo sitting low in the vee where it can be fed directly by "hot side inside" reverse-flow heads. Its fury pours out through an eight-speed automatic transmission and Quattro all-wheel drive.
And so the RS 7 leaps from zero to 60 in just 3.4 seconds (3.2 seconds if you factor in 1 foot of rollout like some magazines we know, even though they shouldn't because it says zero right there in the description). Shortly thereafter the quarter-mile is history in just 11.7 seconds as the RS 7 crosses the stripe at over 121 mph.
The suspension, brakes and tires are up to the task. At the track the beastly Audi needs just 108 feet to stop from 60 mph. It snakes between the slalom cones at 68.3 mph and orbits the skid pad at a two-way average of 0.96g. Impressive, but not quite as otherworldly as the acceleration numbers — until you remember the RS 7 is a luxurious 4,500-pound four-door sedan, and a reasonably stealthy one at that.
We can't tear the engine down, but we can hoist the 2014 Audi RS 7 up on our Rotary 2-post lift to see what makes it light on its feet.