ROUGHLY TRANSLATED, Sossusvlei means ‘dead-end marsh’. Located in the southern part of the world’s oldest desert, the Namib, it’s a vast salt and clay pan flanked by vividly orange sand dunes up to 380m high. Its solitary concrete highway was completed only in 2002, but most of the surfaces we’re driving on still consist of washboard loam, pebbles, and 101 varieties of sand & dust. Automotively speaking, this is hostile country.
Fortunately, the Q7 is no stranger to hostility. It’s arguably Audi’s least-loved model, a victim of its vast size, gargantuan weight, high price and planet-strangling thirst. The Mk2, however, is a different beast – it’s worked off 325kg in weight, courtesy of loads of aluminium, magnesium and titanium, ditched its boxy, big-rig posture and has landed a claimed combined…
