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Outta my way, poser - this is dirty work


The Discovery, right, leaves the Audi eating its mud during the trials (Peter Tarry)




NICHOLAS RUFFORD DRIVES THE LAND ROVER DISCOVERY

When I was reporting for The Sunday Times from Kuwait during the build-up to the Iraq war I was puzzled that all the newly arriving camera crews — especially American ones — wanted Humvees. They were convinced it was the only safe way to travel in a war zone and they were prepared to pay.

In Kuwait City there was a car dealer who by chance had half a dozen ex-military Humvees in stock. He’d bought them with the intention of selling them to rich young Arabs for off-roading and he’d sprayed them ridiculous colours such as pink and yellow. The film crews bought them anyway and followed the American tanks into battle in what looked like giant luminous beach buggies. The Iraqis must have thought they were being invaded by the Monkees.

If they hadn’t been too stunned to fight they could have picked off the Day-Glo Humvees like fish in a barrel.



It’s a mistake to think that in a conflict you are safest in a rough, tough vehicle. The opposite is true. It’s best to be a pebble on a beach: dress inconspicuously like a local and drive a beaten-up Toyota. The moment you step into a new 4x4 you might as well invite the nearest warlord to kill you for your wheels. The only reason they’ll hesitate before shooting you is to order you out of the vehicle so they don’t mess up the interior.

But there are circumstances in which you’ll be glad of a solidly built vehicle — and they are right here in Britain. A big 4x4 is small compared with the juggernauts you find yourself squeezed between on a motorway. Commercial vehicles are growing in size and number and you are entitled to drive something that will protect you in an accident.

In America the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has carried out research into the relative safety of off-roaders and cars. It found that in collisions off-roaders consistently fared much better. The risk of being killed in a front-impact collision was 47% higher for car drivers than for off-roader drivers, according to the latest available figures (2004). In side-impact collisions the contrast was greater: the risk of being killed was 150% higher driving a car.

The safety advantages of off-roaders had nothing to do with the fact that power goes to all four wheels but were because of their extra weight. Drivers of smaller and lighter vehicles, regardless of type, were far more likely to die in a collision.

So if your priority is the safety of you and your occupants, you should choose a heavy vehicle over a lighter one. This is where the Land Rover Discovery has an edge. At 2,718kg, the TdV6 HSE automatic weighs more than two entry-level Ford Focuses (1,229kg each) and nearly 400kg more than the Audi Q7 SE 3.0 TDI (2,325kg). It is heavier even than a Rolls-Royce Phantom (2,485kg).

The extra weight is because Land Rover uses a monocoque frame bolted to an old-style ladder chassis designed for off-road driving. And unlike its sister, the Defender, the Disco’s bodywork is mainly steel, not aluminium.

I had this discussion with Andrew Frankel and he agreed the Land Rover was okay safety-wise but overweight and sluggish compared with rivals. So we agreed to settle our differences on a serious off-road course near Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. Here you can get a 4x4 stuck in mud, ground it on boulders and submerge it completely in water.

Frankel chose the new Audi Q7 fitted with the latest, most advanced technology from parent company Volkswagen. I chose the Discovery V6 diesel. The Discovery 3 has two engine options: a fuel-guzzling 4.4 litre V8 petrol unit and a 2.7 litre V6 turbodiesel. All Discoverys, other than the base TdV6 which has five seats, are seven-seaters with the rear row folding down into the floor to give a large, flat load area. Prices range from £27,040 to £48,540. My test car was the top-of-the-range diesel version, but the TdV6 turbodiesel SE auto, priced at £38,535, is better value.

On the face of it, the Audi and the Land Rover have much in common — both have three rows of seats, both are pitched at the same market and both cost around the same as a luxury saloon but with more versatility and space. But there the similarities end.

Whereas the Land Rover is a genuine off-roader, the Audi isn’t. On the opening hill climb Frankel’s Q7 started to slide as the gradient increased. The Disco demonstrated its superior grip and traction, sticking stubbornly to the slope even with one wheel off the ground. It crested the hill and ploughed on down a boggy forest track. The Audi slithered along behind and got mired in deep mud; the Disco chewed through.

So much rain had fallen overnight that in one place the track had turned into a river. Water the colour of oxtail soup lapped over the bonnets of the two vehicles. The Land Rover was quite at home in its aquatic environment but the Audi started to drift like a bloated hippo. It emerged with its foglights waterlogged and a downcast Frankel behind the wheel. Did I feel smug? Does the Pope drive a 4x4? Of course.


The Disco is also more driver-friendly. The dash offers an array of instrumentation and readouts, like an electronic diagram that tells you how the wheels are aligned so you can steer out of soft ground. You can flick between low and high ratio gears and terrain-response settings that adjust transmission, suspension and traction control depending on conditions. The Audi asks you to put your faith in its computer — a “nanny knows best” approach. You can raise and lower the chassis but all-wheel drive is permanently engaged and it doesn’t offer low-range gear selection. Conclusion: when the going gets tough you are better off in a Land Rover.

But what about on the road? Well, it is a closer call. The Q7’s 230bhp diesel engine pushes it to 62mph in 9.1sec compared with 11.7sec for the 187bhp Disco. That’s a noticeable difference, but it’s Audi’s only trump card. You might think that being heavier the Disco would also be thirstier on fuel but it has a slight edge (the Audi returns 26.9mpg combined, the Disco 27.2mpg.). That’s not bad for a seven-seater. A Mini Cooper S with four seats does 32.8mpg.

Okay, the Audi probably has the edge over the Land Rover in terms of contemporary styling. In black it looks pretty damn sleek and its forged alloy wheels and silver trim give it that German bling appeal carjackers are so fond of. Personally, I wouldn’t have one because I wouldn’t want to go anywhere in a vehicle that looked as though it was designed for Keanu Reeves to drive in The Matrix. A 4x4 should be dirty, dented and so messed-up no carjacker or warlord would want it.



ANDREW FRANKEL DRIVES THE AUDI Q7


Rufford and Frankel prepare to put the Discovery and Q7 through their paces (Peter Tarry)
If you’re unlucky enough to meet a motoring journalist, never ask him or her what car you should buy. They’re asked that question every time they meet anyone, so they’re likely to scowl and say the first thing that comes into their heads. Worse, they might just smile sweetly and tell you you’ll never know the meaning of life until you’ve shared it with a Trabant.

Mostly, though, we have different priorities. When the subject in question is something like this Audi Q7 SE 3.0 TDI, I want to talk about how functional its interior is and what it’s like to drive. But if the gentle folk of southwest London who slavered over this one are any guide, your only real interest is what you’d look like in it, something I feel in no better position to judge than anyone else.



What I can say is that it was a winner with them the moment they saw it. I’ve driven Lamborghinis that have attracted less attention than this. It was outside my house for just two days and did but one school run yet I still managed to run into two people who already had one on order and one more who was waiting only to see it before she parted with her deposit.

Even so, there are one or two things you should know about the Q7 that may not be apparent from the photographs. First, it really is vast: it’s longer than an S-class Mercedes limo, wider than a Ferrari F430 and only a couple of fat blokes lighter than a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Also, while something like a Jaguar XK looks much better in the flesh than on the page, the same cannot be said of the Q7. I wouldn’t call it ugly but it is definitely aloof, aggressive and arrogant in appearance.

And it is an absolutely useless off-roader. It’s not that it gets stuck over the smallest obstacle — its traction is not bad and height-adjustable suspension means it has good ground clearance — but the wheels stick out further than the tyres so the first time you brush against anything at all hard, it is expensive, unyielding alloy that makes the first point of contact, not cheap, pliant rubber. Also, the front foglamps turn into goldfish bowls the moment you go wading through water.

But in its more usual on-road habitat the Q7 has been broadly well thought out, even though its ride quality is rough and its engine not the most refined in the class. It’s a genuine seven-seater and, once you’ve folded all the chairs into the floor, an extremely commodious load carrier too. The driving environment appears to have been pinched from an Audi A6 and works well, while the driving position is sufficiently high to ensure you’ll always be able to look down on all those poor people in normal cars.

You may, of course, be wondering whether any of this adds up to creating a plausible argument in its favour over the class-leading Discovery. In response to that, all I’d suggest is that you take one for a squirt up the road.

There you will discover the Disco is one of very few things on the road that actually weighs more than a Phantom. And fitted with a low-power version of the 2.7 litre V6 diesel used by Jaguar, Peugeot and Citroën, there are glaciers that step more smartly off the line.

By contrast, the Q7 feels like it’s been electrocuted when you touch the throttle. Its weight advantage, coupled with a huge power advantage from its 3 litre diesel, gives it very reasonable performance, something you’d never be tempted to say about its British rival. It’ll hit 62mph in 9.1sec and carry on to a very respectable 134mph. Compare that with the 11.7sec for the 0-62mph sprint and 112mph top speed of the Discovery automatic. And the Audi uses hardly any more fuel.

But we should not get carried away with ourselves. The Q7 may share its name with a Spike Milligan sketch show but it’s nothing like as smart or innovative. The interior is spacious not because of clever packaging but simply because the car is huge. The engine does give good performance but nothing like what it produces in the rather more conventional, not to say somewhat cheaper Audi A6 Avant. That’ll get to 62mph in 7.3sec and has a top speed of 149mph.

And if you think you get dirty looks from the tree-cuddlers driving a standard-sized SUV to school in a crowded city street, wait until you try it in one that’s bigger than a Merc limo.

Finally, there is the Johnny-come-lately issue. Audi has been astonishingly slow on the uptake with the Q7: the luxury off-roader class was invented by the Range Rover 36 years ago and the Q7 has leapt into the market years after its closest rivals from BMW, Mercedes and Lexus and just in time to see fuel prices spiralling on both sides of the Atlantic.

I don’t know how much longer these cars can continue to sell in such vast numbers in the face of such hostile economic indicators, not to mention the increasing environmental and social pressure their owners face to switch into something slightly less profligate with the world’s resources. But when the tide does turn, as it surely will, Audi had better hope the market does not operate on a last-in, first-out basis.

At least the Discovery, in offering outstanding off-road ability and being made by a company that’s never built anything other than SUVs, is unimpeachably authentic.

Before I drove the Q7 I told Nick Rufford I would have little problem championing its cause over that of his Discovery, but that’s not how it turned out after a couple of days at the wheel. The off-road challenge at Eastnor Castle I rather foolishly let him talk me into was, I’m afraid, the clincher.

I can see that the idea of a vast SUV wearing an Audi badge will be compelling for a certain sort of unreconstructed, image-obsessed fashion victim, but not me. It is big but, I’m afraid, it’s not clever.