Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Jonathan Gitlin

Audi

Audi

Audi

Audi

Audi

Audi

DETROIT—It's fair to say that this year's North American International Auto Show has been a little lackluster. But one of the standouts was the North American debut of the new Audi A7. The previous model was—to my eyes—Audi's best-looking model, and I was worried that its successor wouldn't live up. Happily, that isn't the case.

But the new A7 is not just a pretty face; under the skin, you'll find almost all the same technology that Audi is packing into its A8 flagship sedan. That means class-leading infotainment and—once regulators are happy—some seriously advanced headlights and level 3 autonomous driving.

At this point, my love for the fastback body style is well-documented. You get the convenience of four doors and a hatchback with almost all the elegance of a coupe—little wonder that Tesla decided upon fastback styling for the Model S.

The new A7's styling was first signaled in the Prologue concept of 2014, but the production car may look even better. It's low and wide, with flared rear-wheel arches that are meant to call back to the bulging extensions that adorned the Sport Quattro of the 1980s.

It's a big car, though; 16.3-feet (4,969mm) long and 6.3-feet (1,908mm) wide. But those dimensions are put to good use. There's more legroom in the back than the outgoing model and more headroom, too, thanks to bump-outs in the headlining. That trunk is capacious—I'm pretty sure you could fit a bicycle in there without laying the rear seats flat. (With the seats up, there's 18.9 cubic feet/535L of luggage space; with the seats folded flat, that goes up to 49.1 cubic feet/1,390L.)

Let there be light!

Perhaps the most striking features are the A7's lights. Both front and rear LED lights go through a neat animated cycle upon startup that reminded me a little of Knight Rider, and Audi says the 12 lighting segments on the headlights "mimic the binary digits 0 and 1." But don't let that distract you from the clever tech hiding within the clusters.

For example, laser spotlights can project much farther down the road than a conventional high-beam light. The matrix LEDs also have a cool party trick—the shape of the beams can be controlled down to the individual pixel. That means it's possible to have them on full beam (as opposed to dipped) without blinding oncoming drivers, as the car's sensors tell the lights which pixels not to illuminate (i.e., the ones that would otherwise light up the windshield of an oncoming car).

However, some regulatory hurdles still need to be cleared before we can have those functions here in the US. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard governing headlights has not been updated in years, despite requests from multiple OEMs and suppliers (like Texas Instruments) during the past few years. Assuming the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) becomes cooperative, the matrix LED and laser spotlights should be available as an option; if they don't, then US A7s will have to make do with just LED high and low beams.

NHTSA approval will also be required before we can get the level 3 driverless Traffic Jam Pilot as an option on the A7. The system—which uses a combination of optical cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and a front-mounted, 145-degree, three-beam lidar unit—will allow the A7 to drive itself on limited-access, divided-lane highways at speeds up to 37mph (60km/h).

The tech-fest continues on the inside. Here, we find almost the same "Black Panel" MMI infotainment system that we saw in the A8. The main difference is that the screens are now oriented more toward the driver than in the big sedan. In addition to the (excellent) Virtual Cockpit main instrument panel, the new MMI system uses a pair of haptic-feedback touchscreen displays; the upper screen contains most of the functions you'd expect from an infotainment system, while the lower one controls the seats and climate settings, with some hard-coded buttons for things like hazard lights and defrosting controls.

Pricing for the 2019 A7 hasn't been announced yet, but it should be forthcoming closer to the car's arrival on these shores in the latter part of this year.

Listing image by Jonathan Gitlin