The Audi Q7 is currently the largest SUV that Audi has in the range, but it doesn’t seem to stay that way for long. An apparently even larger SUV of the brand can be seen on a brand-new set of spy plates. Possibly the Q9 that has been speculated about for years.
With a length of 5.05 meters, the Audi Q7 is the largest SUV on the Audi menu, a car that has to tolerate the second 5 meters long Q8 above it within the Audi hierarchy. Those two SUVs will soon seem to get a model above them purely in terms of size. Audi has started testing what appears to be an even larger model, a car that we will refer to in this article as the Q9. Already in 2013, the first rumors about the possible arrival of a Q9 surfaced when it turned out that Audi had registered that model name.
Volkswagen Atlas, facelift (2020 -)
We explicitly write that the Q9 in these photos will be placed above the Q7 and Q8 purely in terms of size. The question is whether the car will actually be positioned above those SUVs. The new SUV clearly has an Audi face, complete with a large grille as a grille and an angular front bumper laced with large cooling openings. The final headlights are still missing, but there are already Audi-characteristic light units at the rear. However, the body of the car shows great similarities with that of the Volkswagen Atlas, the SUV that is known in China as Teramont. Both the window line and the design of the wheel arches of this test car seem to correspond to those of the Atlas. Although the Atlas and Teramont are larger than the Touareg, in the United States and China they are one step lower on the status ladder than the Touareg. The Touareg, like the Audi Q7, Q8, Porsche Cayenne and Bentley Bentayga, uses Audi’s MLBevo platform, while the Atlas is MQB-based.
It is therefore quite possible that the ‘Q9’ Audi’s visible in these photos may even become an extended version of the Atlas, a car that may only be marketed in China. The camouflage work with which the photographed test specimen is covered has a different pattern than the stickers with which Audi normally tries to shield the design of its newcomers from the outside world, although that does not necessarily mean anything. There are also ‘coupé versions’ of both the Atlas and Teramont, the Atlas Cross Sport and the Teramont X respectively, so even more SUV expansion seems possible at Audi.
Of course there is also another possibility. It could be that the snapped test sample is a so-called mule and that Audi uses the body of the Volkswagen Teramont to hide the technology of a completely new model. Should the Q9 nevertheless become a car positioned above the Q7 and Q8, it would be a car with which Audi will reply to cars such as the Mercedes-Benz GLS and BMW X7. For the time being, Audi’s newcomer is in any case still shrouded in thick mist.