3.2 Premium 4dr All-Wheel Drive quattro Sport Utility
2009 Audi Q5

2009 Audi Q5 – Click above for high-res image gallery Quality costs. Ask a recording engineer. For the same money you'll burn on a pile of inexpensive, non-serviceable gear whose greatest virtue is that "it works," you could alternatively purchase one channel's worth of serious equipment. The trade-off is that the real kit sounds great all the time, while the cheaper stuff never does. Boiled down to their essence, they both do the same thing, but it's the quality of the components and the careful construction that make all the difference. It's the same thing with the 2009 Audi Q5. $50,000 will put your rump in vast automotive acreage, but for the same coin, the Q5's dimensions are tidy. Combating the "quantity equals quality" mindset, Audi has made the Q5 a standout. It's filled with luxury and comfort items, and put together with typical German fastidiousness. And out on the road, the Q5 chats you up with feedback that's – dare we say – sports-like. So has Audi managed to finally put the "sport" in Sport Utility? %Gallery-73803% Photos copyright ©2009 Dan Roth / Weblogs, Inc. Styling-wise, the Q5 is unmistakably Audi. Without carefully looking, it could be mistaken for its larger Q7 brother, if only ran through a clothes dryer. Initial inspection led your humble narrator to believe that the Q5 shares its underpinnings with Volkswagen's similarly-sized Tiguan, when in fact, the Q5 is based on the A4/A5's Modular Longitudinal Platform. Relatively compact, the Q5's lines share the recent Audi family style, which suggests constant forward motion by playing light along the surface detailing in a raked manner; lower in front than in back, like a modern, Teutonic hot rod. The sculpted form is subtle and controlled, not over-muscled or gratuitously flared to look like some kind of U.N. Peacekeeping vehicle. The Q5 nevertheless blends in with the noise created by America's booming two-box pseudo-truck market. It's nicely styled and clean looking, but there's only so many places the form factor can go without being overly radical. Everyone knows what a Hummer looks like, and the H1, H2 and H3 share that style. The Q5, too, looks like an Audi crossover should, it's just a much less bold outpost of the styling world. Audi exhibits its typical restraint with brightwork, with an accent around the windows and brushed aluminum rails tracing the arc of the roofline. Wheels look like blades from some outsized food processor, with a design open enough to bare the calipers for binder-peekers. The batwing taillamps have a gestural motion to their cross-car arc, and finish the back end tidily. It looks like the lights out back hold the entire bodywork in tension, and it's just right. While the Q5 is not outlandish enough to be anything other than just another wagon in denial outside of Nordstrom, A6 drivers will give you that serious-looking nod and half-wave off the steering wheel rim when you drive by. Even if you aren't an Audi fan, you still …
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